televandalist:

Laika, painted by M.A. Peers. One of five portraits of Russian Space Dogs commissioned by the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Photographs of Laika usually show her in the laboratory, looking nervous and beleaguered in her spacesuit. Yet here she looks intelligent and alert, her ears cocked against a blue, skylike void. On the wall above her are the words “All the universe is full of the lives of perfect creatures,” from Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, the 19th-century Russian schoolteacher whose visionary drawings and writings foresaw the concept of space travel, with animals as the first pioneers.