To contribute to Félicette's memorial, visit the Kickstarter page by Nov. For that, she deserves her rightful recognition." It's Félicette's contributions to spaceflight research that will one day allow us to take our cats to the Martian colonies and beyond. Seems the common misconception that only men are leading the fields of science and engineering applies to cats, too. However, others have offered a different explanation for Félix the cat.Īccording to the video, the memory of Félicette has been "further obscured, as a series of commemorative stamps all assumed she was a male cat named Félix. Other reports insinuate that Félicette was actually a backup cat for another cat named Félix, who escaped on the day of his flight. "Ultimately, it was Félicette who was chosen for the mission, due to her calm disposition," the video states, "though some reports say it was because all the other cats had put on too much weight." The cats also had electrodes implanted into their brains so scientists could monitor their neurological activity. That training involved the same kind of centrifuge that human astronauts sit in during their preflight training. In fact, these cats went through the same intensive training as human astronauts," the video states. "Back then, scientists around the world wanted to understand how the lack of gravity could affect animals - the idea being, if they can survive in space, then so can humans. Félicette's mission helped bring France into the space race. Her participation 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. Félicette may have made headlines that can forever be located in old newspaper archives, but so far, there is no permanent memorial for this cosmic cat.įélicette was one of 14 cats selected by the French space program to undergo spaceflight training. The first cat has nothing," an unnamed narrator says in the Kickstarter campaign's video. The first dog in space is immortalized in bronze. "The first chimp in space is buried at the International Space Hall of Fame.
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