In a historic move, Russia has launched an actor and a film director into space to make a feature film in orbit in a bid to raise the prestige of Russia’s space program and beat USA’s Hollywood project that was announced earlier this year by Tom Cruise together with NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko blasted off today for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft together with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran of three space missions. Their Soyuz MS-19 lifted off on schedule from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, the Russian space launch facility. They are supposed to film segments of the film titled Challenge in which Peresild, who plays a surgeon rushed to the space station to save a crew who suffers from a heart condition. Peresild and Klimenko will stay in the space outpost for 12 days after which they will return to Earth with another Russian cosmonaut.
Let's go, #SoyuzMS19! Let's go #Challenge!
The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the ISS-66 crew launches from Baikonur.
The crew of @Anton_Astrey and spaceflight participants Klim Shipenko and Yulia Peresild went into orbit. pic.twitter.com/2XU5gOkm7q
— (@roscosmos) October 5, 2021
Speaking at a pre-flight news conference Monday, Peresild said it was challenging for her to adapt to the strict discipline and rigorous demands of the space training. She said, “It was psychologically, physically and morally hard. But I think that once we achieve the goal, all that will seem not so difficult and we will remember it with a smile.”
Shipenko also described their fast-track, four-month preparation as extremely tough and said, “Of course, we couldn’t make many things at the first try, and sometimes even at a third attempt, but it’s normal.” He further said that Shkaplerov and two other Russian cosmonauts will have a starring role in the film. He will be completing the film’s shoot on Earth after filming the space episodes.
The Soyuz crew ship hatch to the station opened at 11am ET and three Russian crewmates entered the station increasing the space population to 10. https://t.co/05zsK3fkeH
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) October 5, 2021
Once they arrive at the space station on Tuesday, the three newcomers will join Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency; NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur; Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. Novitskiy, who is set to star as the ailing cosmonaut in the film, will take the captain’s seat in a Soyuz capsule to take the crew back to Earth on Oct. 17. The 12-day Russian mission follows the launch of the first all-civilian crew aboard a rocket and capsule developed by SpaceX, which was founded by businessman Elon Musk.
(Source: Associated Press/AFP/Twitter)
