Space Dogs review: A dog’s-eye view of how Laika could have lived

By Elle Hunt

A Russian street dog named Laika was the first living creature to orbit Earth. This is so well known a fact as to scarcely need stating – but in becoming trivia, the ambition and brutality of the Soviet experiment she was part of in November 1957 has been lost. Space Dogs, a documentary with a limited streaming release in the UK this month, attempts to expand our perspective to include a dog’s-eye view.

Laika died shortly after launch, her body circling the Earth in Sputnik 2 “like some cosmic flotsam”, says actor Aleksei Serebryako, who contributes Space Dogs …