A Russian film crew took a rocket to space Tuesday to make the world’s first movie in Earth’s orbit, the Moscow Times reported.
Actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko took off into space to film a movie titled “The Challenge” in an attempt to beat a Hollywood project involving Tom Cruise, NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the Moscow Times reported. (RELATED: ‘I’m Going To Be A ‘Rocket Man’: 90-Year-Old Legendary Sci-Fi Actor Heading To Space)
Russia film crew prepares to blast off to make historic 1st movie in space https://t.co/1153BXRifz
— kcranews (@kcranews) October 5, 2021
Veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov joined Peresild and Shipenko aboard a Soyuz spacecraft which was scheduled to take off from the Russian space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and arrive at the International Space Station (ISS), the Associated Press reported.
The crew will travel to ISS on a 12-day mission to film “The Challenge,” which is about a medic played by Peresild who must travel to ISS in order to save a cosmonaut’s life, Russian news agency TASS reported.
Along with Shkaplerov, cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov are said to have roles in the film, according to TASS.
“It was psychologically, physically and morally hard,” Peresild said, according to the Associated Press. “But I think that once we achieve the goal, all that will seem not so difficult and we will remember it with a smile.”
Peresild was selected out of 3,000 applicants to play the role of the medic, according to the The Moscow Times.
Peresild, Shipenko and Novitsky are all expected to return to Earth on Oct. 17 in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, TASS reported.