Yulia Peresild, a Russian actress, Mr. Shipenko and Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran astronaut who has completed three treks to and from the space station since 2011, are strapped inside the MS-19 capsule on their way to the space station. Ms. Peresild has spent months training for the mission. She auditioned for the role earlier this year in a competition with dozens of other actresses. Alyona Mordovina, the competition’s runner-up, was standing by as Ms. Peresild’s backup, and would have gone to orbit if something had prevented the primary crew from launching to space.
The film crew will return to Earth on Oct. 17 along with Oleg Novitsky, an astronaut who’s been on the station since April.
“Undoubtedly, this mission is special, we have people going to space who are neither tourists nor professional cosmonauts,” said Dmitri Rogozin, director general of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. He said he hoped the flight would help the agency attract a new generation of talent.
What movie are they making on the space station?
The movie’s working title is “The Challenge,” and it’s about a surgeon, played by Ms. Peresild, who embarks on an emergency mission to the space station to save an ailing cosmonaut’s life. Few other details about the plot or the filming aboard the station have been announced, although NASA said on Tuesday that Mr. Novitsky, one of the Russian astronauts currently aboard the station, will be a subject in the movie.
Why are they making a movie in orbit?
For “The Challenge,” cinematic storytelling may take a back seat to the symbolism of shooting a movie in space. The production is a joint project involving Russia’s space agency Roscosmos; Channel One; and Yellow, Black and White, a Russian film studio.
Like a lot of private missions to space these days, Channel One and Roscosmos hope the film can prove to the public that space isn’t reserved for only government astronauts. One of the production’s core objectives is to show that “spaceflights are gradually becoming available not only for professionals, but also for an ever wider range of interested persons,” Channel One said on its website.
Mr. Rogozin , the Russian space agency leader, said he hopes the mission will make “a truly serious work of art and a whole new development of the promotion of space technologies,” in order to attract young talent to Russia’s space program.