March 24, 2008 -- He's not very cute or cuddly and he's certainly not welcome inside the house, but the astronauts aboard the International Space Station are captivated with their new pet: a massive robot named Dextre. The mechanical beast, delivered and assembled by the visiting space shuttle Endeavour crew, stands like a guard dog on top of the U.S. laboratory Destiny.
"He's built to be brawn, not brains," said Endeavour astronaut Richard Linnehan. Linnehan, a former veterinarian, is among some who feel real pets will eventually have a place in space.
"I think someday it's inevitable," Linnehan told Discovery News in a preflight interview. "We get to the point where we have colonies on the moon and colonies on Mars and we have large areas of pressurized living space. I think pets will be there for sure. Pets follow people around."
Animals actually made it into space before people. The former Soviet Union flew dogs to learn how microgravity affects living creatures and to test medical and life-support equipment. The United States chose monkeys.
A stray female dog named Laika led the way, tucked into Sputnik 2 on the second Soviet spacecraft to reach orbit on Nov. 3, 1957. The capsule was not designed to be recovered, and Laika died when the batteries on life-support systems expired. Sputnik 2 re-entered Earth's atmosphere five months later and was incinerated.
A dozen more dogs followed Laika into space before the Soviets launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961.
The United States favored chimpanzees for space research and built up a program of suborbital flights that preceded the launch of America's first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on May 5, 1961. Another chimp, Enos, flew before NASA launched John Glenn on the first orbital mission on Feb. 20, 1962.
As the Soviets and the Americans expanded their space programs to include research satellites and space stations, animals became subjects for life science experiments. The orbital menagerie included monkeys, frogs, fish, spiders, fruit flies, newts, rats, crickets and worms.
Linnehan said space travelers in the future may have a greater variety of options for companions.
"Maybe they won't have dogs and cats," he said. "Maybe they'll find some strange life on another planet that makes a great pet."
In the meantime, Dextre the robot offers a start. He will soon be assisting astronauts during spacewalks to maintain the space station.
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