Major role for Aleksandr Galkin, a 63 year old anthro Siberian husky man who works as a professor at a university in Moscow, circa 1957. He's very reserved, shy and tends to keep to himself. He's like this because his son, Ivan, died in World War II during an aerial dogfight, and he blames himself for it. That was on top of his wife dying years beforehand, after she was taken to a Soviet gulag which proved to be fatal. Aleksandr goes out of his way to hide his trauma from anyone he doesn't deeply trust, hoping to appear like he's just focused on his work all the time. He tries to cope with feeling like he's lost his purpose in life, to incredibly mixed results. Once Aleksandr gets involved with the mission to launch Sputnik 2, he's assigned to be Laika's instructor to help guide her through the training she'll endure for it. Long-repressed feelings of guilt and regret start to re-surface, and it threatens to derail the entire mission if he's not careful.