In March, I visited the Lowell Observatory — the astronomical research site where Pluto was first discovered — in Flagstaff, Arizona. I stood in line to squint through telescopes at Jupiter and the ...

Sixty-eight years ago, on November 3, 1957, a historic event unfolded when Laika, a small stray dog from Moscow, became the first living creature to orbit Earth aboard the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2.