Coming Soon! First Fictional Film Shot In Space. Russian Crew Reach ISS To Shoot ‘The Challenge’

The Russian film crew comprising actress Yulia Pereslid and director Klim Shipenko, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov have docked into the International Space Station.

New Delhi: The Russian film crew set to shoot first full length feature film in space have docked into the International Space Station after flying for over three hours aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. The official Twitter handle of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, confirmed that the Soyuz MS19 crewed spacecraft docked into the Russian segment of the International Space Station after orbiting the Earth twice.

Roscosmos tweeted, "Welcome to the ISS!".

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying actress Yulia Pereslid and director Klim Shipenko, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, docked at the ISS at 12:22 GMT Tuesday (5:52 pm IST), according to an AFP report.

Since the spacecraft was not able to dock automatically, the manual mode of docking was followed, Russian news agency TASS reported. This was done through the TORU system, which is Teleoperated Mode of (spacecraft) Control. The TORU system is the manual docking system of the Soyuz spacecraft.

Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov used the manual mode, because of which there was a delay in docking the spacecraft into the Rassvet module, according to the Roscosmos livestream. The Soyuz spacecraft docked at the ISS at 12:22 GMT Tuesday (5:52 pm IST).

The crew will stay at the ISS for 12 days to shoot the first live action film in space, "The Challenge". The film is a joint project of Roscosmos, Channel One and the Yellow, Black and White Studio, and is based on the life of a woman doctor who needs to go to orbit to save a cosmonaut's life. Yulia Pereslid will play the doctor's role, and three Russian cosmonauts— Anton Shkaplerov, Oleg Novitskiy, and Pyotr Dubrov will also be part of the filming. The actress and the director, Klim Shipenko, had to undergo intense training from May this year, at the Cosmonaut Training Center, in order to be ready for this mission.

The airtightness of the docking will be checked by the ISS crew. Also, the crew will equalise the air pressure between the ISS and the spacecraft. After the procedure is complete, the hatch will be opened at around 14:10 GMT (7:40 pm IST) and the crew aboard the Soyuz spacecraft will join the Expedition 65 crew on the ISS.

During the docking livestream, NASA said that the actress and the director will visit the American segment of the space station, and also the Cupola panoramic dome module, while filming the movie aboard the ISS. The narrator added that scenes will be filmed in the Cupola, which is a European Space Agency based observatory.

Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin told TASS that they will hold real training for surgery in space, and that the movie will become a tribute of gratitude to medics during the pandemic.

Oleg Novitskiy will fly Pereslid and Shipenko back to Earth, aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, on October 17. However, Shkaplerov and Dubrov will stay on the space station for 174 days.