A Russian film crew finally returned to Earth after 12 days on the International Space Station or ISS. They shot multiple scenes for the first featured film in space.
Russian Film Crew Finished Filming Movie Scenes in ISS
On Oct. 17, Klim Shipenko and Yulia Peresild both landed on the steppe located in Kazakhstan.
The footage of the landing was broadcasted live by the Russian space agency, according to France24.
Oleg Novitsky, a cosmonaut who had been on the space station since earlier this year, had assisted the crew to the base.
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency that went the crew to space, posted about the mission on Twitter. The agency confirmed that the vehicle of the crewed spacecraft Soyuz MS-18 is secure and the crew is safe.
We are live again - https://t.co/b0mrI021s5
At 04:35 UTC the #SoyuzMS18 descent vehicle will land. We are having Roscosmos cosmonaut @OlegMKS here with us. He will tell us the details about the ISS crew landings. https://t.co/jDTjq6FTJm— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) October 17, 2021
Earlier this month, the filmmakers had blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and they traveled to the ISS with Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran cosmonaut, to film the scenes for the movie "The Challenge."
If the project ends up being released, the Russian film crew will beat a Hollywood project revealed in 2020 by Tom Cruise and SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk, as they also planned to go to space to film a movie.
The budget and the plot of the movie were not revealed. All that was announced is that the movie is about a surgeon dispatched to the ISS to save a dying cosmonaut.
The 49-year-old Shkaplerov and two other Russian cosmonauts are said to have made a cameo in the movie.
Issues Faced by the Russian Film Crew
The mission was not smooth sailing. In fact, the crew encountered several problems during their trip and stayed in the ISS. After the crew docked at the station, Shkaplerov was forced to switch to manual control.
On Friday, Oct. 15, the Russian flight controllers conducted a test on the spacecraft and fired the thruster--tilted the ISS for 30 minutes, according to TASS.
The landing, which was documented by the crew, will also be included in the film. The head of the Channel One TV network, Konstantin Ernst, told AFP that they are now editing the movie.
The Russians are known to have done a lot of firsts in space. They launched Sputnik, the first satellite. They also sent Laika the dog to be the first animal to space. Yuri Gagarin was the first man sent into orbit, while Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman.
However, these past few years, Russia has been falling behind in the space race as it struggles to compete with China and the United States, both countries that show growing ambitions in the space industry.
Roscosmos was affected after SpaceX successfully delivered astronauts to the space station in 2020. This ended Russia's monopoly for journeys to the station.
In an attempt to revive its image, the new space program that Russia revealed earlier this year would boost its tourism plan by offering ISS trips to paying adventurers.
Russia is scheduled to send two Japanese tourists to the ISS in December, including billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.
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Written by Sophie Webster
