The Russian film team that shot parts of a feature film for the first time on board the International Space Station (ISS) has returned to Earth. Director Klim Schipenko and actress Julija Peressild landed together with the cosmonaut Oleg Novizkij on the Kazakh steppe on Sunday morning. There they were welcomed by the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitrij Rogozin, and the general director of the most important Russian state television broadcaster, Perwij Kanal, Konstantin Ernst. Everything went well, said Rogozin. According to doctors, the crew of the Soyuz space capsule is doing fine. Peressild said she was a little sad that shooting on the ISS was over after twelve days.
The actress and the director flew with another cosmonaut from the Baikonur spaceport to the space station on October 5th to shoot 35 to 40 minutes of a film with the working title “Challenge”. Peressild plays a cardiac surgeon who carries out vital heart surgery on a cosmonaut Novizkij was supposed to play. The actress "feels wonderful, as we can see," wrote Roskosmos on Twitter about a photo of the smiling Peressild in a spacesuit.
With the film, the agency, battered by corruption scandals, which experts believe has technically fallen behind its American rivals, wants to promote itself and space travel.
It was also about anticipating an American film project in space about the star Tom Cruise, which, however, has been postponed indefinitely.
The Russian project was criticized in Moscow because the plot was completely unrealistic and the country's space program was mixed up for the shoot.