Russia sends actress and director into space to film first movie in orbit
Russia has blasted an actress and director into space to make the world’s first movie in orbit.
Russian actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko rocketed to the International Space Station in a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, along with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov.
The spacecraft launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday at 9:55am BST (October 5), arriving at the station roughly three and a half hours later.
The pair will film scenes for a new movie provisionally titled Challenge, where Peresild will play a surgeon who is sent to the space station to save a crew member who needs an urgent operation.
The hatches between #SoyuzMS19 and ISS have been opened ??
A 10-member crew of Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr Dubrov, Anton Shkaplerov, Klim Shipenko, Yulia Peresild, Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough, Megan MacArthur, Tomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide are now working at the station. pic.twitter.com/wHz5Bs6Zdd
— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) October 5, 2021
The Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS will also be featured in the final film, which will be produced with help from Russian space agency Roscosmos. Peresild and Shipenko will spend 12 days at the space station for filming.
This will be the first film ever shot in orbit, as the Russians aim to claim another space-orientated victory over the Americans at NASA.
Speaking at a pre-flight conference, Peresild said: “It will not be on the same level as on Earth, but we will do our best. We are ready for it.
“It is a bit too late to be afraid because we’ve come so far, there is Baikonur ahead and a lot of things [to do] and to be honest, there is just no time left for fear.”
This comes after Tom Cruise and Elon Musk, in coordination with NASA, planned to shoot a movie in orbit, directed by Edge Of Tomorrow’s Doug Liman.
Cruise’s trip to space was scheduled for October 2021 back in September last year, although there have been few updates on the project since.
The last was in September 2021, where Cruise spoke (as confirmed on Twitter) with crew members on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 following a successful three-day orbital mission to learn about their experience.
