Belka
Belka may refer to any one of the following.
People
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War (エースコンバット・ゼロ ザ・ベルカン・ウォー, Ēsu Konbatto Zero Za Berukan Wō) is a semi-realistic flight simulator developed by Bandai Namco Games for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It is part of the Ace Combat series of games. In Europe the game was released under the title Ace Combat: The Belkan War.
Gameplay
Ace Combat Zero's gameplay is split into a single-player campaign mode and a two-player versus mode. The mechanics themselves are a mix of features from Ace Combat 4 and 5.
The game features primarily older versions of fighter aircraft seen in its predecessor game, such as the F-15C, F/A-18C, and several second- and third-generation fighters like the Saab 35 Draken. The player's first airplane is an F-5 Tiger II, but will be able to acquire other more advanced aircraft by destroying targets to earn credits. The game's official superfighters are the ADF-01 Falken from Ace Combat 5 and the ADFX-02 Morgan, but players can access the X-02 Wyvern from Ace Combat 4.
Soviet space dogs
During the 1950s and 1960s the USSR used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether human spaceflight was feasible. In this period, the Soviet Union launched missions with passenger slots for at least 57 dogs. The number of dogs in space is smaller, as some dogs flew more than once. Most survived; the few that died were lost mostly through technical failures, according to the parameters of the test. A notable exception is Laika, the first dog to be sent into orbit, whose death was expected from the outset.
Training
Dogs were the preferred animal for the experiments because scientists felt dogs were well suited to endure long periods of inactivity. As part of their training, they were confined in small boxes for 15–20 days at a time. Stray dogs, rather than animals accustomed to living in a house, were chosen because the scientists felt they would be able to tolerate the rigorous and extreme stresses of space flight better than other dogs. Female dogs were used because of their temperament and because the suit the dogs wore in order to collect urine and feces was equipped with a special device, designed to work only with females.
BelKA
BelKA (an acronym from Belarusian: Беларускі Касмічны Апарат, Belarusian Cosmic Apparatus) was intended to be the first satellite of independent Belarus.
It was a remote sensing satellite that utilizes the Victoria universal satellite bus, developed by Belarusian researchers and Russian Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya for National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus as the final customer of the satellite, which had the capacity to take photos of the Earth surface, with a maximum resolution of 2-2.5 meters.
BelKA was launched, along with seventeen other satellites, on July 26, 2006 at 19:45 GMT, however 86 seconds later, the Dnepr-1 rocket suffered an engine failure and crashed, destroying the satellites.
The name BelKA is thought to be an allusion to the dog, Belka, who, together with Strelka orbited the Earth and returned safely on Sputnik 5 in 1960.
Russian RKA Energiya
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