We show that in Euclidean 3-space any closed curve which contains the unit sphere in its convex hull has length at least 4pi, and characterize the case of equality, which settles a conjecture of Zalgaller. Furthermore, we establish an estimate for the higher dimensional version of this problem by Nazarov, which is sharp up to a multiplicative constant. Finally we discuss connections with sphere packing problems, and other optimization questions for convex hull of space curves. This is joint work with James Wenk.