A Russian actor and a film director have returned to Earth after spending 12 days on the International Space Station shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit.<\/p>\n
Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko landed as scheduled on Kazakhstans steppe early on Sunday, according to footage broadcast live by the Russian space agency.<\/p>\n
They were ferried back to terra firma by cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, who had been on the space station for the past six months.<\/p>\n
The descent vehicle of the crewed spacecraft Soyuz MS-18 is standing upright and is secure. The crew are feeling good! Russian space agency Roscosmos tweeted.<\/p>\n
The film-makers had blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier this month, travelling to the ISS with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov to film scenes for The Challenge.<\/p>\n
If the project stays on track, the Russian crew will beat a Hollywood project announced last year by Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise together with Nasa and Elon Musks SpaceX.<\/p>\n
The movies plot, which has been mostly kept under wraps along with its budget, centres around a surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut.<\/p>\n
Shkaplerov, 49, along with the two Russian cosmonauts who were already aboard the ISS, are said to have cameo roles in the film.<\/p>\n
The mission was not without small hitches.<\/p>\n
As the film crew docked at the ISS earlier this month, Shkaplerov had to switch to manual control.<\/p>\n
And when Russian flight controllers on Friday conducted a test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft the ships thruster fired unexpectedly and destabilised the ISS for 30 minutes, a Nasa spokesperson told the Russian news agency TASS.<\/p>\n
Their landing, which was documented by a film crew, will also feature in the movie, Konstantin Ernst, the head of the Kremlin-friendly Channel One TV network and a co-producer of The Challenge, told AFP.<\/p>\n
The mission will add to a long list of firsts for Russias space industry.<\/p>\n
The Soviets launched the first satellite Sputnik, and sent into orbit the first animal, a dog named Laika, the first man, Yuri Gagarin, and the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova.<\/p>\n
But compared with the Soviet era, modern Russia has struggled to innovate and its space industry is fighting to secure state funding with the Kremlin prioritising military spending.<\/p>\n
Its space agency is still reliant on Soviet-designed technology and has faced a number of setbacks, including corruption scandals and botched launches.<\/p>\n
Russia is also falling behind in the global space race, facing tough competition from the US and China, with Beijing showing growing ambitions in the industry.<\/p>\n
Russias Roscosmos was also dealt a blow after SpaceX last year successfully delivered astronauts to the ISS, ending Moscows monopoly for journeys to the orbital station.<\/p>\n
In a bid to spruce up its image and diversify its revenue, Russias space programme revealed this year that it will be reviving its tourism plan to ferry fee-paying adventurers to the ISS.<\/p>\n
After a decade-long pause, Russia will send two Japanese tourists including billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the ISS in December, capping a year that has been a milestone for amateur space travel.<\/p>\n
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Russian film crew return to Earth after shooting the first movie in space - The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Russian actor and a film director have returned to Earth after spending 12 days on the International Space Station shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit. Continue reading