What Happened To The First Space Cat?

Félicette

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your participation in my
success of 18 October 1963

Species    - Felis catus
Sex            - Female
Known for  - The first cat in space
Owner    - French government

Appearance - Tuxedo cat






Félicette (French pronunciation: ?[fe.li?.s?t]) was the first cat to have been launched into space.
She was launched on 18 October 1963, by France, and is the only cat to have survived spaceflight; a second feline was launched on 24 October, but the mission resulted in a fatality.

Félicette has been commemorated on postage stamps around the world,and in 2017 a funding campaign for a memorial was launched.


Prior non-human animals in space

On 3 November 1957 the Soviets sent Laika, a dog, into space on Sputnik 2. The dog was a stray found on the streets of Moscow. She died in space, but was the first animal to be launched into space and orbit the Earth. On 31 January 1961, as part of Project Mercury, the chimpanzee Ham became
the first hominid launched into space; his mission was a suborbital flight. On 29 November 1961, Enos became the second chimp, and third hominid after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, to achieve Earth orbit. He orbited the Earth for 1 hour and 28 minutes, surviving the flight and reentry. Félicette would be the first cat launched into space.French scientists chose a cat since they already had a significant amount of data on them.The French rocket program began in 1961.France's base in the Sahara had previously launched three rats.


Mission

French sounding rocket similar
to that which carried Félicette

Félicette was a black-and-white stray cat, found on the streets of Paris by a pet dealer, and later was purchased by the French government.In 1963, the French trained 14 cats using some of the same training that humans underwent, such as high-G centrifuges and compression chambers.The animals were trained by the Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherches de Médecine Aéronautique (CERMA).
All of the cats had permanent electrodes surgically implanted into their brain to assess neurological activity.
The cat chosen for the launch since the other trainees were overweight on launch day.The cats were unnamed prior to the launch, potentially so the scientists would not get attached to them.

On 18 October 1963 at 8:09 am, Félicette was launched into space from the Centre interarmées d'essais d'engins spéciaux site in Algeria on a Véronique AGI 47 sounding rocket (made in Vernon, Haute-Normandie).Véronique came from the German World War II Aggregate rocket family and led to the French Diamant satellite launcher. The Veronique AGI was developed for the International Geophysical Year (French: Année géophysique internationale) in 1957 for biological research. Out of the fifteen AGI 47 rockets assembled, 7 would carry live animals.

The mission was a sub-orbital flight, and lasted 13 minutes, reaching a height of 152 kilometers, and included 5 minutes of weightlessness.Félicette was recovered safely after the capsule was ejected from the rocket and it parachuted to Earth;she was killed two months later so that scientists could examine her brain.[18] After the successful launch, the "astrocat" was given the name Félicette.

A second feline was launched into space on 24 October. Unlike Félicette, that cat died when the carrying rocket exploded on ascent.


Legacy

Félicette (sitting on right) with
11 human members (all standing)
of the 1963 launch team

According to an article in Space.com on 8 November 2017, the participation of Félicette in the space race:
was certainly not voluntary, but it was a huge milestone for France, which had just established the
world's third civilian space agency (after the U.S. and the Soviet Union). Félicette's mission helped bring France into the space race.

The article also mentions that in the 1960s, scientists wanted to understand how the lack of gravity would affect animals, to understand what would happen to humans, and "these cats went through the same intensive training as human astronauts" Ultimately, Félicette was chosen for the mission over 13 other cats in training partially due to her calm disposition.

In 1997, postage stamps commemorating Félicette and other animals in space were created in Chad.
Félicette's legacy was somewhat obscured as a number of commemorative stamps from different countries mistakenly identified her as a male cat named Félix.


Statue

While some non-human animals who traveled in space were celebrated as heroes - the chimpanzee
Ham was buried at the International Space Hall of Fame, and the Soviet dog Laika launched in 1957 has a bronze at the Star City cosmonaut training facility - there was no memorial for Félicette. To rectify this oversight, in 2017 a crowdfunding campaign was started by Matthew Serge Guy to erect a bronze statue of Félicette to commemorate her contribution to science.Guy said:

I was touched by how, out of all the animal astronauts' stories, Félicette’s story seems to be the one that’s become twisted the most over the years, with some people even thinking she was a male cat named Felix... By proposing a statue, I guess I was hoping to set her story straight in a big way.

Guy also said that if the crowdfunding is successful, the statue is planned to be designed by sculptor Gill Parker, and installed in Félicette's hometown, Paris.A preliminary sketch of the monument depicts a cat on top of a rocket, and will include a plaque featuring the names of the major donors. As of April 2018, over 1,140 backers had pledged a total of £43,323 to the project, exceeding the £40,000 funding goal.

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