Early this morning, a trio of Russians launched to the Worldwide Area Station on a Soyuz spacecraft, however two of these fliers had been no abnormal cosmonauts. Included within the crew was a Russian actress named Yulia Peresild and a movie producer named Klim Shipenko, who’ve simply docked on the station to movie scenes for an upcoming film. With their arrival, they’re the primary multiperson movie crew to go to the ISS.
Peresild and Shipenko will keep on the station for simply 12 days, filming scenes for a film known as The Problem. The film revolves round a Russian physician, performed by Peresild, who should journey to the area station to deal with a sick cosmonaut. Producer Shipenko will likely be engaged on filming and lighting. The 2 flew to area together with Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who will likely be dwelling on the station till spring, conducting analysis for Russia’s area company, Roscosmos. He’ll even be serving to out with the manufacturing. Shkaplerov, together with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov — who’re already dwelling on the station — will play minor components within the movie’s manufacturing.
This Russian movie crew could also be just the start of actors heading to area over the following few years. On October twelfth, William Shatner is scheduled to fly to the sting of area and again on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, although he gained’t really make it into orbit. (There have been studies that Tom Cruise might head to the area station on a SpaceX Dragon sometime to shoot scenes for a film, however nothing has been confirmed.)
Picture by Roscosmos Press Workplace TASS through Getty Photos
At this time’s mission received underway at 4:55AM ET, with the liftoff of Russia’s Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio had a brief journey, touring simply two laps across the Earth earlier than approaching the Worldwide Area Station. Nonetheless, assembly up with the station didn’t precisely go as deliberate. Whereas the Soyuz capsule is able to docking with the ISS by itself, this explicit method was out of alignment, and Shkaplerov needed to take over the controls of the car manually. He successfully docked the capsule onto the station.
Peresild and Shipenko will movie totally on the Russian part of the area station whereas they’re up there. In the meantime, on the US facet of the ISS, a world crew of astronauts have been dwelling and dealing collectively for a lot of months. They embody NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough, and Megan McArthur, in addition to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Area Company and Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company. As soon as they’ve wrapped, Peresild and Shipenko will head again to Earth in one other Soyuz in mid-October with Novitskiy.
The ISS is not any stranger to visits from area vacationers, and movies have been recorded in area earlier than. Within the Nineteen Eighties, astronauts onboard the early Area Shuttle flights introduced IMAX cameras with them to report footage, which was compiled right into a documentary known as The Dream is Alive. And when online game developer Richard Garriott flew to the area station in 2008 as a paying area vacationer, he filmed a brief science fiction movie known as Apogee of Worry. It was the primary fictional film fully shot in area, although it was lower than eight minutes lengthy. The Problem is ready to be the primary feature-length movie to incorporate scenes shot in area.
