A Russian actress and director on Tuesday arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a 12-day mission to make the first movie in orbit.
The Russian crew is set to beat a Hollywood project that was announced last year by Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise together with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Actress Yulia Peresild, 37, and film director Klim Shipenko, 38, took off from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as scheduled.
Photo: AFP / Russian Space Agency Roscosmos
They docked at the ISS, behind schedule at 12:22 GMT, after veteran cosmonaut and captain of their spacecraft, Anton Shkaplerov, switched to manual control.
As the hatches opened, the Russian trio floated into the orbital station where they were greeted by two Russian, one French, one Japanese and three American astronauts.
“Welcome to the International Space Station,” Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky wrote on Twitter from the ISS.
The crew traveled in a Soyuz MS-19 spaceship to film scenes for The Challenge.
The movie’s plot — which has been mostly kept under wraps along with its budget — centers around a female surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut.
Shkaplerov, 49, and the two Russian cosmonauts already aboard the ISS are said to have cameo roles in the film.
Konstantin Ernst, the head of the Kremlin-friendly Channel One TV network and a coproducer of the film, said that he spoke with the crew as soon as they docked.
“They are in good spirits and feel well,” Ernst said.
“It was difficult psychologically, physically and emotionally ... but I think when we reach our goal the challenges won’t seem so bad,” Peresild told a pre-flight news briefing.
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