Russian Filmmaker Returns Back After Filming In Space

According to footage broadcast live by the Russian space agency, Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko landed on Kazakhstan's steppe as planned after spending 12 days on the International Space Station shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit. If the project stays on track, the crew will overmatch a Hollywood project announced last year by "Mission Impossible" star Tom Cruise in collaboration with Nasa and Elon Musk's SpaceX. They returned to the Earth by cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, who had spent the previous six months in the space station. According to a Nasa official, when Russian flight controllers conducted a test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft intended to take the crew down to Earth, the ship's thruster suddenly ignited, destabilizing the ISS for 30 minutes. Their departure, however, will take place as planned, according to the spokeswoman. The trio will be transported by Russian helicopter to the recovery staging city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, before boarding a Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center aircraft for the flight back to their training base in Star City, Russia.

The premise of the film, which has been kept mainly under wraps along with its budget, revolves around a physician who is sent to the International Space Station to save a cosmonaut. The filmmakers had taken out from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is leased by Russia, earlier this month to film scenes for The Challenge aboard the International Space Station with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov.