A Russian crew including an actor and a film director has returned to Earth after spending 12 days on the International Space Station shooting scenes for the first movie in space. The movie’s plot centers around a surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut, AFP reported.
Yulia Peresild, Director Klim Shipenko, and cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky landed in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft as scheduled on Kazakhstan's steppe at 4:36 a.m. GMT, according to footage broadcast live by Russia's Roscosmos space agency. Shipenko appeared distressed but smiling as he exited the capsule, waving his hand to cameras before being carried off by medical workers for an examination.
Peresild, who plays the film's starring role and was selected from some 3,000 applicants, was extracted from the capsule to applause and a bouquet of flowers.
Cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, the first to step down from the ship, was welcomed by Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin who said: "Everything is fine."
"The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft landed vertically and it is secure now. The crew members are fine," said Roscosmos on Twitter. Before returning to Earth, Rogozin shared pictures showing members of the agency's rescue team on their way to the landing site in 10 helicopters.
To film this movie planned to rival another similar upcoming American project, Yulia Peresild, 37, and Director Klim Shipenko, 38, blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on October 5, travelling with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov.
This cinematic adventure is a new chapter that will be added to the long ongoing Russian-American space rivalry, and it comes six decades after the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut to the orbit.
Roscosmos had revealed its cinematic aspiration after NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX announced a joint movie project featuring Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise.
