On this day in space: March 9, 1961: Soviet Union launches dummy, dog and guinea pig into space

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On March 9, 1961, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 9.

On March 9, 1961, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 9. This mission was a test flight of the Vostok spacecraft, which would later carry the first cosmonauts into space.

a mostly-blue vintage postage stamp depicting a rocket and a dog next to a photo of a test mannequin in an orange flight suit.

(Image credit: Smithsonian/Wikipedia)

The dummy and his gang of animals launched on a Vostok-K carrier rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. All the animals made it back to Earth unharmed after completing one orbit around the Earth. Ivan Ivanovich was ejected from the capsule during re-entry and landed with his own parachute.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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