A month after Sputnik went up in 1957, the Soviets launched a another satellite, Sputnik 2, with a very famous passenger: Laika, a mutt from the streets of Moscow.

She never made it home.

The writer John Haskell has this tribute, part fact and part fiction, to the canine cosmonaut. A version of this story appears in his book, “I Am Not Jackson Pollock.”

(Originally aired October 5, 2007)