What to Know About the Film Crew Shooting the First Movie in Space This Week

A Roscosmos Soyuz rocket is scheduled to launch Tuesday morning from the Baikonur cosmodrome, sending a Russian movie crew and one cosmonaut to the International Space Station. Here are the small print of the mission and how one can watch the launch on-line.

This has been a really eventful 12 months in area, as U.S. corporations Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX all managed to ship vacationers to the ultimate frontier for the very first time. For Russia, that is outdated hat. Back in 2001, Roscosmos efficiently transported U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito to the ISS, who dished out a cool $20 million for the historic flight.

Roscosmos is now trying to strive one thing a bit totally different. The Russian area company is sending a director and actress to the ISS, the place they are going to movie scenes for an upcoming movie titled Vyzov, or Challenge in English (a literal translation can be The Call, for what it’s value). The movie is a joint undertaking involving Roscosmos, Channel One, and Yellow, Black and White studio.

Director Klim Shipenko, 37, and actress Yulia Peresild, 35, together with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, 49, are scheduled to launch aboard a Soyuz-2.1a rocket on October 5 at 11:55 a.m. Moscow time (4:55 a.m. EDT or 1:55 a.m. PDT). Channel One will present livestreams of the launch on its website and on Youtube (beneath). Roscosmos will even have a feed obtainable.

The spacecraft ought to attain the ISS three hours and 17 minutes after launch, which is fairly quick, so far as this stuff go. Shkaplerov will be a part of the Expedition 66 crew and keep till March of subsequent 12 months, whereas Shipenko and Peresild will keep on the ISS for not less than 12 days, with a tentative return scheduled for October 17.

The filmmakers are hoping to amass between 35 and 40 minutes of footage throughout their transient keep. Peresild will painting Zhenya—an working surgeon who has only one month to organize for a flight to the ISS, the place she is going to try to avoid wasting an ailing cosmonaut’s life. She was chosen for the function following an open competitors and after efficiently finishing bodily and medical exams. Runner-up Alyona Mordovina is serving because the backup actress for the mission. Novitsky will play the function of the cosmonaut who wants medical help, according to Russia’s state-run TASS information company.

Using the ISS as a movie set is assured to supply an genuine sense of what it’s wish to dwell and work in area. The closest precedent to that is Apollo 13, through which the microgravity scenes had been shot inside NASA’s KC-135 plane, which is famously often called the “vomit comet.” Because stints of weightlessness had been restricted to 25 seconds, the solid and crew needed to carry out 612 flight parabolas to seize the required footage. Needless to say, this gained’t be a problem on the ISS, the place microgravity is in abundance.

For the previous a number of months, the movie crew has been getting ready on the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center facility on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“We underwent an accelerated course of many important elements that the cosmonauts study over many years. We tried to master them in four months. Of course, this is very fast. We had a lot of theory, practice, endurance, sports—everything imaginable,” Shipenko told TASS. The level, he mentioned, was to not attain the coaching of a full-fledged cosmonaut, however “to prepare as a participant of a space flight.”

As a part of their coaching, the movie crew, together with their respective backups, studied the design of the Soyuz spacecraft and the Russian section of the ISS. They additionally acquired emergency response coaching, which included simulated water landings and weightlessness coaching aboard a zero-g plane. As TASS studies, Peresild “hadn’t realized how much effort the preparation for the project would require,” however even with hindsight she wouldn’t have given up the chance.

The Roscosmos web site describes it as a “scientific and educational project,” however because the Russian area company admitted final 12 months, the “movie is aimed to popularize Russia’s space activities” and to “glorify [the] cosmonaut profession.” Some Russian scientists and former cosmonauts have complained in regards to the mission, saying the movie is diverting sources that might’ve been used elsewhere. As of late August, the producers had been nonetheless searching for funding for the undertaking.

More: New Cracks on ISS Expose Deteriorating State of Russian Segment.