Plaque honours space dog

Moscow - As Russian cosmonauts completed a spacewalk around the Mir orbital station yesterday, a memorial was unveiled in Moscow to a pioneer who gave her life to make their mission possible - a small mongrel dog called Laika. Exactly 40 years after she was blasted into orbit aboard the Sputnik 2, becoming the first living creature in space, Laika was finally remembered on a plaque at the Moscow research centre where she was trained. She died in 1957 after a week in orbit.