Russian Film Crew Heads to ISS to Shoot First Movie in Space
The motion picture follows a doctor sent to outer space to rescue an ill cosmonaut.
Move over, Tom Cruise: A Russian film crew left Earth’s atmosphere today to shoot the first-ever motion picture in space.
Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild, and director Klim Shipenko took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan just before 5 a.m. ET. They are expected to dock with the International Space Station’s Rassvet module around 8:12 a.m. ET.
Joined by a backup crew—including cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, actress Alena Mordovina, and cameraman Alexey Dudin—the team will film some 35 to 40 minutes of footage for their space drama about a doctor who flies into orbit to rescue a cosmonaut. The movie, under the working title Vyzov ( Challenge), is a joint project by Roscosmos, Channel One Russia, and the Yellow, Black and White studio.
“We have people going to space who are neither tourists nor professional cosmonauts,” Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin said in a statement. Calling this mission “undoubtedly special,” he told Channel One Russia that the space agency hopes to “obtain a truly serious work of art and a whole new development of the promotion of space technologies.”
That’s the secondary goal here: Inspire more Russians to join the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities.
“The station has long [been] a filming location,” Artemyev added. “We film a lot of stuff about our life in orbit, about life in space. But until now, it has been largely documentaries, while this will be the first experience making a feature film.”
Peresild and Shipenko, who are making their first flights into space, will spend 12 days on the artificial satellite before returning to Earth with ISS resident Oleg Novitsky. Shkaplerov will remain aboard the station for six months.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
