Silver Ounce 2007 Soviet Space - Laika Dog, Coin from Mongolia - detailed information

The currency of Mongolia since 1925 has been the tögrög, which currently circulates mostly as banknotes due to the low value of earlier coins and the reluctance of the government to issue large denomination coins; however, the government has authorises many non-circulating legal tender (NCLT) coins to be issued for collector's purposes.

Collector coins are dedicated to historical or general popular culture themes and are often not related to the country itself. Many of them are in standard bullion sizes, including the internationally popular one ounce of silver format.

This coin is part of the Soviet Space series and commemorates the dog Laika.

Laika (Russian: Лайка; 1954 - 1957) was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. Laika, a stray mongrel from the streets of Moscow, was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into low orbit on 3 November 1957. No capacity for her recovery and survival was planned, and she died of overheating or suffocation hours into the flight.

Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so Laika's survival was never expected. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure a micro-g environment, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments.