Members of a Russian film crew have landed back on Earth after successfully wrapping up scenes for the first movie to be shot in space.
Actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko landed safely in Kazakhstan after having left the International Space Station and spending 12 days shooting a movie in the orbit. They were met by a crew filming their touchdown scenes.
The landing took place as scheduled on Kazakhstan’s steppe early on Sunday, as reported by the live broadcast by the Russian space agency.
They were ferried back to terra firma by cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, who has been stationed at the space station for the past six months.
Russian space agency Roscosmos tweeted “The descent vehicle of the crewed spacecraft Soyuz MS-18 is standing upright and is secure. The crew is feeling good!”.
The filmmakers had blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan twelve days ago traveling to the ISS with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov to film scenes for a film titled ‘The Challenge’.
Last year Tom Cruise announced a project involving shooting in space in collaboration with NASA as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX. If the ‘The challenge’ continues to stay on track, the Russian crew will beat the aforementioned Hollywood project.
The movie’s plot revolves around a surgeon dispatched to the ISS in order to save a cosmonaut. Details regarding the plot have not been disclosed any further.
Shkaplerov, 49, along with the two Russian cosmonauts who were already aboard the ISS, is said to have cameo roles in the film.
The mission did have its fair share of technical glitches. While the film crew was docking at the ISS earlier this month, Soyuz’s automatic Kurs docking system failed and the commander was forced to switch to manual control.
Another encounter with tech breakdown occurred when Russian flight controllers on Friday conducted a test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft the ship’s thruster fired unexpectedly leading to the destabilization of the ISS for 30 minutes, as reported by a Nasa spokesperson.
The landing of the crew was also documented to be a part of the movie as shared by Konstantin Ernst, the head of the Kremlin-friendly Channel One TV network and a co-producer of The Challenge.
The mission is a start to a long list of firsts for the Russian space industry.
The Soviets launched the first satellite Sputnik, and were able to send the first animal into orbit, a dog named Laika, the first man, Yuri Gagarin, and the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova.
Russia’s Roscosmos was dealt a blow last year after its monopoly over journeys to the station ended when SpaceX successfully delivered astronauts to the ISS.
On Friday the ISS unexpectedly tilted after a glitch in its thrusters, pausing filming. It was not a part of the script. However, the departure was not delayed by Friday’s glitch, which resulted in lost positioning control for about half an hour.
In a farewell tweet from the ISS, Peresild showed off a weightless hairdo probably to prevent any conspiracy theorists from thinking it was all shot on Earth.
The actor and director are scheduled to be taken to Russia’s Star City training base for a 10-day rehab now.
