Russian film crew back on Earth

Edinburgh, 19 October 2021. – A Russian film crew comprising actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko are back on Earth after wrapping up scenes on the ISS for the first movie shot in space. The landing of the Soyuz MS-18 in Kazakhstan was filmed and touchdown scenes will be used in the movie.

The film is called the “Challenge” and rightly so, as the crew encountered some issues while in space. NASA reported that the space station lost attitude control on Friday for the second time this year. The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft fired its thrusters as part of a test before departing. However, the thrusters continued to fire even after the test ended. Attitude control was restored within 30 minutes.

This wasn’t the film crew’s only experience with faulty technology on the ISS. When they arrived on 5^th October, the docking system failed so they had to switch to manual control to finish the process. Pereslid and Shipenko are currently under rehab at Russia’s Star City training base.

The head of Roscosmos came up with the idea of filming a movie about space in space. He even fired the head of crewed missions over the project, although due to widespread backlash, he was rehired within a few days. The crew was part of a ‘space race’ against Tom Cruise, NASA and SpaceX, as they vowed to be the first to shoot a film in space.

A Russian trio said farewell to the station crew and closed the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship hatch at 4:41pm ET today. They undock at 9:14pm this evening. More… https://t.co/Hwwr4AEUI7 pic.twitter.com/aXFOtG2H1O

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) October 16, 2021