dog Laika

every 98 minutes

every 96 minutes

Sputnik 2’s batteries died on Nov. 10, 1957, and the spacecraft stopped beaming data home. “With all systems dead, the spacecraft continued circling the Earth until April 14, 1958, when it re-entered the atmosphere after 2,570 orbits (2,370 orbits according to other sources) or 162 days in space,” Zak wrote.

96 days

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski (left), Vladislav Volkov (middle), and Viktor Patsayev (right), the only three people to die in space, are featured on three USSR stamps. On June 29, the cosmonauts loaded back into the Soyuz 11 spacecraft and began their descent to Earth. And that’s when tragedy struck.

Vanguard 1

In 1999, several Russian sources reported that Laika had died when the cabin overheated on the fourth orbit. In October 2002, Dimitri Malashenkov, one of the scientists behind the Sputnik 2 mission, revealed that Laika had died by the fourth circuit of flight from overheating.

According to this Salon article[1], yes they do. They don’t need the support, but the bra keeps their wobbly bits in place while floating around in microgravity. They also like having an extra layer between said bits and the cameras all over the space station.

Humans do die if left in outer space without a space suit. But they die for the same reason as people who are left too long underwater: lack of oxygen. The Federal Aviation Administration reports in advisory circular 61-107 that humans remain fully conscious and useful for 9-12 seconds after being exposed to a vacuum.

The astronauts aboard the shuttle didn’t die instantly. After the collapse of its fuel tank, the Challenger itself remained momentarily intact, and actually continued moving upwards.

Long-term exposure causes multiple health problems, one of the most significant being loss of bone and muscle mass. Over time these deconditioning effects can impair astronauts’ performance, increase their risk of injury, reduce their aerobic capacity, and slow down their cardiovascular system.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly completed a single mission aboard the International Space Station of 340 days on March 1, 2016. NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s first mission aboard the orbiting lab ended after 328 days on Feb. 6, 2020.

The world record for the single longest mission by any space explorer, man or woman, is held by cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who spent 438 consecutive days on board Russia’s former space station Mir from January 1994 to March 1995.

365 days

Of multiple attempted Mars landings by robotic, unmanned spacecraft, ten have had successful soft landings. There have also been studies for a possible human mission to Mars, including a landing, but none have been attempted. The most recent landing took place on the 18 of February 2021 by the NASA rover Perseverance.