Félicette the French area cat, the world’s solely feline astronaut

The Soviets appreciated dogs as a result of they had been simple to coach. The Americans most well-liked mice for his or her measurement, or monkeys for his or her similarities with people. 

As for cats, France stays the one nation to have ever tried placing them in area. 

To perceive why, we’ve to return to a time when area journey was solely simply turning into a actuality, and researchers had been nonetheless groping for the boundaries of what may and may not be potential.  

“This was a period when literally this was totally new,” explains Kerrie Dougherty, an area historian who lectures on the International Space University in Strasbourg. 

The story of France’s area cat on the Spotlight in France podcast:

Not solely would the early rockets have struggled to hold a human’s weight, there have been too many unknowns to threat sending a person into area – not to mention preserve them circling in orbit. 

“There was a serious and genuine concern, for example, that it might literally cause an astronaut to go insane, that the differing reactions that your senses would be getting from being in this totally non-normal environment and being weightless might cause an astronaut to pass out, or might cause your eyes not to work properly,” Dougherty says. 

So as an alternative the United States and the Soviet Union, the 2 nations main the world into the area age, despatched animals: first flies, then mice, monkeys and dogs. 

In November 1957, a Moscow mutt named Laika turned the primary residing creature to orbit Earth, aboard the Soviet rocket Sputnik 2. The thermal management system failed, exposing her to temperatures of 40 levels Celsius for a number of hours; by her fourth time around the planet, it’s believed, she had died of overheating. 

Nonetheless, Dougherty calls the mission “a huge achievement, and a huge surprise”: it demonstrated that it was potential for residing organisms to outlive – for some time, not less than – in orbit.  

By August 1960, when the Soviets recovered two dogs, a rabbit, 42 mice, two rats and an unspecified variety of flies after a day circling the Earth, they had been even coming again alive.  

France’s area ambitions 

Even as a really distant third to the Soviets and Americans, France was decided to be a space-faring nation too.

It started building a brand new technology of rockets proper after World War II, and by the early Fifties was testing a slim mannequin dubbed the Véronique: a so-called sounding rocket that may shoot briefly into area earlier than freefalling again to Earth with out ever getting into orbit.

The first launches blasted off from a base within the higher Sahara Desert, in what was then the French colony of Algeria.  

On 22 February 1961, France turned the third nation to launch an animal into area: a rat named Hector, who flew aboard a Véronique rocket on a brief sub-orbital flight. 

From rats to cats 

Hector was adopted by Castor and Pollux in October of the identical 12 months (Hector and Castor survived; Pollux didn’t make it). 

But the French workforce had greater ambitions. They had been on the lookout for one other small mammal to ship into area, bigger than a rat however small and lightweight sufficient to journey within the slim nostril cone on the tip of a Véronique. 

While rabbits or small dogs might need match the invoice, there was one essential motive to decide on cats: on the time, they had been broadly utilized in France for neurophysiological experiments, inspecting how the mind and nervous system labored.  

“You could compare the data that you would get from a cat with data already existing from research done on the ground,” explains Dougherty, who co-wrote an academic paper on the mission in 2018.  

There may additionally have been a much less scientific motive, she speculates: “Cats are pretty good at hiding in small places.” 

The nostril cone was definitely cramped. It needed to match a restraint for the animal, devices to measure and transmit knowledge about its bodily state, a cartridge to soak up the carbon dioxide it breathed out, transponders, beacons and a parachute. 

Meanwhile the take-off and re-entry could be loud and turbulent, but you couldn’t threat the take a look at topic thrashing about and dislodging essential tools. 

That meant France would wish to undertake one thing almost as bold as mastering area flight: coaching a cat. 

Feline flight faculty 

In mid-1963 the French Aero-Medical Research Centre, Cerma, chosen 14 cats for flight faculty: all females, bought from a supplier and advisable for his or her calm temperament. 

They had been skilled for round two months, practising sitting in a container for hours, being spun round in a centrifuge and placing up with blaring engine noise. 

In early October, the cats who appeared to tolerate it finest had been taken to Algeria to organize for a launch.  

After a number of days of preparations, a petite black-and-white cat recognized as C341 – Cerma was cautious of naming the animals lest its researchers get too hooked up – was picked to change into the world’s first cat in area. 

At round 8am on 18 October 1963, Cat C341 took off within the tip of a Véronique.

Electrodes surgically implanted on her cranium measured her mind exercise. Probes took her coronary heart price, a tool hooked up to her leg despatched a small electrical present to her muscle tissue – to check her responses – and a microphone recorded the sounds she made. 

The first minute or so was sheer acceleration – one thing like being shot up in a tin can, to go by Dougherty’s description.

“The cat’s being pressed down, it’s being shook around, it’s got this loud roaring that it would be hearing through the walls of the nosecone,” she says. 

But then the capsule reached zero gravity. The cat’s coronary heart had raced and her respiratory quickened throughout take-off, however at this level the information modified. 

“She was obviously distressed by the shock of launch, but she did cope quite well with that weightless period,” Dougherty says.

“Admittedly it wasn’t a very long period, but she was seemingly quite content, the breathing was pretty good, they weren’t recording any mewing from her … I don’t know that she would have been purring, but she doesn’t seem to have been overly upset during the actual period of weightlessness.” 

Arcing upwards to 157 kilometres above the Earth, the nostril cone separated as deliberate from the remainder of the rocket.  

Then it fell, sooner and sooner, pitching and rolling because it re-entered the Earth’s ambiance. This was the part the cat disliked most, to evaluate by her thumping coronary heart.  

The parachute opened and jerked the capsule to a sluggish downward drift. Ten and a half minutes later, the cat was again on the bottom, solely a few kilometres from the place she’d left it.  

Sacrificed to science 

A helicopter swooped in to recuperate the nostril cone and its passenger, who was shaken however alive. 

“She’s fine, she’s doing perfectly well, she’s eating well – I think she’s quite alright,” the director of Cerma, Robert Grandpierre, told a television interviewer triumphantly.

But France’s area programme wasn’t completed together with her but. The subsequent two months had been spent conducting exams. Had her brush with outer area affected her behaviour, her muscle tissue, her nervous system? 

Finally the researchers turned their consideration to the cat’s mind. At the time, there was just one solution to look at it.

“They put her down so that they could look at the areas of the brain, especially around where the electrodes were to see if they had caused any issues,” says Dougherty.

“As it turned out, apparently there weren’t any. So she probably could have gone on living happily for some time longer.”  

She believes the sacrifice, although regrettable, was half and parcel of the experiment. “Unfortunately for her they did put her down and they probably didn’t need to. But again, it’s one of these things: at the time they didn’t know that until they did it.” 

A tiny a part of area historical past 

Like Laika the canine and Ham the chimp, who the US had launched into area two years earlier, Cat 341 was briefly an area celeb.  

When the media discovered in regards to the flight, they nicknamed her “Felix”, like the cartoon. Cerma took up the title, although, since she was feminine, they made it Félicette. 

But the area race quickly moved on. Soviet and American rockets had been already highly effective sufficient to hold a human into area, as they every briefly had in the spring of 1961.  

France, too, would rapidly advance from Véroniques to higher-powered Vestas. After a second flight with a unique cat resulted in failure, Cerma gave up on felines altogether; by 1967, France was launching macaque monkeys into area.  

All the feverish progress “overtook very quickly Félicette’s little experiment”, says Dougherty. “She never had a chance to really become famous at the time, except with space buffs.” 

It was due to them – in addition to a newfound fan who began a crowdfunding marketing campaign – that, in 2019, Félicette acquired a memorial statue within the International Space University’s Pioneers Hall. 

“Félicette’s story is a tiny little part of that quest to understand what it is that space does to the living organism,” observes Dougherty. 

“The story’s had a little bit of a revival and I think now, coming up on that 60th anniversary, it is nice to give Félicette a little bit of the coverage that she didn’t get back in the day.” 

Her subsequent pet kitty, she tells RFI, shall be named Félicette. “She’s still the only cat that’s been into space – and survived.”

Listen to a dialog about Félicette on episode 101 of RFI’s Spotlight on France podcast.