The space agencies have a dark past. With any animal they could think of, they experimented by sending them into space, subjecting them to conditions that were unnatural for them. It was, specifically, a way to test how the anatomy of their bodies reacts, and then send astronauts. One of the many cases is that of Félicette, the first cat to meet the stars.
Félicette went from abandonment to traveling to space. She was part of a space program of 14 cats in France, which were trained in the 1960s to travel more than 150 thousand meters from the Earth’s surface.
She is, without many detours, the first astronaut cat. She was launched into space on October 18, 1963 aboard a Véronique AGI rocket from the Center interarmées d’essais d’engins spéciaux in Algeria.
There are those who say that the flight reached a height of 152 kilometers and others that it reached 157 kilometers. They all agree that the kitten remained completely weightless for at least five minutes.
Félicette was a stray cat. The portal Long live USA He explains that at that time they tried females, because the males were very explosive and would not be able to withstand weeks of training, much less space travel.
The French government selected her for the mission because she was a healthy and active cat. She was trained for several months for the mission, and electrodes were placed on her brain to record her brain activity during the flight.
Félicette’s launch was a success, and the kitten returned to Earth safely. The experiment proved that cats could survive space travel, and helped pave the way for human space missions.
The NOT tender part
After her return to Félicette she was euthanized in 1964, at the age of two. They removed the electrodes from her brain, with the intention of studying the effects of space travel on her body.