More than 60 years after the victory of the Soviet Union over the United States by launching the first artificial satellite in human history, a new space race has begun between the two opponents, and once again, Russia excels by announcing that it will send an actress and director to the International Space Station next month, to shoot the first movie in history in space entitled "" The Challenge" (The Challenge).

A meeting of the Chief Medical Commission took place at the GCTC 🧑‍🚀

The commission consider @Anton_Astrey spaceflight participants Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko, as well as @OlegMKS, spaceflight participants Alyona Mordovina and Alexey Dudin as medically fit for spaceflight.

pic.twitter.com/agstkOw6qp

— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) August 31, 2021

Last year, NASA announced its cooperation with SpaceX, actor Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman to shoot the first feature-length film in space, on board its International Space Station, with a budget of about $200 million. However, the date of the filming of the film has not yet been determined.

In the aftermath, the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced that it wanted Russia to be the first country in the world to make a film in space, and indeed it embarked on that and became closer than America to achieving the dream.

Unprecedented challenge

The events of "The Challenge" revolve around a doctor, played by Russian actress Yulia Peresild, who is forced to travel within a short time to the International Space Station in order to save the life of an astronaut.

Peresild, 37, spoke during a press conference in Moscow, before leaving to prepare for launch, about her training on a plane that simulates the environment of microgravity (gravity in the weightless state of space) and said, "In the first two seconds, it was scary, but after that, it looked very beautiful." ".

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A post shared by Юлия Пересильд Julia Peresild (@juliaperesild)

Peresild and director Klim Shipenko, 38, are scheduled to travel on October 5 aboard the Soyuz spacecraft, on a 12-day trip, including 10 days dedicated to filming the film in the Russian part of the space station.

Peresild and Shipenko hoped to portray weightlessness as never before in the imagination, convey the feelings of freely floating and seeing the earth from the sky through the eyes of non-professionals. We want everyone to feel very much what our heroine is going through."

The decision came after a committee of medical and safety experts from the "Yuri Gagarin" Cosmonaut Training Center agreed to shoot the film, after Peresild and Shipenko underwent training, which began this spring.

Peresild, whose father is a painter and mother is a kindergarten teacher, has achieved great stardom in her country, and has played roles in many popular films and television series, and has worked for years at the Malaya Bronnaya Theater in Moscow, as is the comedy film "Son of a Rich" Rich), directed by Shipenko, is the highest-grossing Russian film of all time.

Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov will drive the three-seater Soyuz spacecraft, and all mission members have trained for emergencies, whether in the capsule or the Russian part of the station.

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A post shared by Юлия Пересильд Julia Peresild (@juliaperesild)

Peresild admitted that she will face restrictions during filming in space, because of the very limited number, there will be no staff of assistants, so she will apply cosmetics herself, prepare her clothes, and Shipenko will perform all technical tasks such as photography, lighting and sound control, in addition to his duties as a director, Astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station will also participate in small parts of the film.

acceleration into space

The Russian plan to launch an actress into space follows a flurry of flights by non-professionals this year, including that of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who went into space on the first flights of his own aerospace company, Blue Origin ( Blue origin) last July.

A few days ago, 4 non-professional passengers traveled to space on a SpaceX vehicle founded by American billionaire Elon Musk, and the flight was bought by the young American billionaire and entrepreneur Jared Isakman, 38, and donated the remaining three seats to the cancer survivor Hayley Arsenault. , Professor of Earth sciences Sian Proctor, and US Air Force soldier Christopher Sembrowski.

humble previous attempts

The "Collect Space" news site on the history of space mentioned that there have been modest previous attempts to shoot fictional films in space, as Richard Garriott, an entrepreneur who traveled as a tourist in 2008, shot a 7-minute short film entitled "Climax of Fear" ( Apogee of Fear).

The 1984 Soviet film "Return from Orbit" also included scenes filmed in space, and former astronauts have shot documentaries for decades, and the Apollo missions to the moon were pioneers in live television broadcasts.

But "The Challenge" will become the first feature film to be shot in space, and the first cinematic work for an actor and director to travel to space.