The Russian team having shot the first film in the space to return to earth
A Russian actress and director, who stayed for 12 days on the International Space Station (ISS) to shoot the first film in space, returned to Earth Sunday morning.
The Soyuz MS-18 capsule carrying Ioulia Peressild, Klim Chipenko and the Cosmonaut Oleg Novitski went down under a clear blue sky before landing in the Steppes of Kazakhstan at 4:36 am, the scheduled time, according to the images broadcast by the Space AgencyRussian, Roscosmos.
Director Klim Chipenko, 38, appeared out of the capsule, visibly tested but smiling, making a gesture of the hand to the cameras and people present, before being carried to the doctors in front of controlling his condition.
Ioulia Peressild, 37, the actress playing the main role of the film, selected among some 3.000 candidates, was then taken from the capsule to the applause, in the same state, before receiving a bouquet of flowers and being examined.
The cosmonaut Oleg Novitski, released the first from the ship, was greeted by the boss of Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozine, to whom he launched: "All is well!".
Shortly before returning to earth, M.Rogozine had published photographs of his rescue team en route on the location of the landing aboard ten helicopters.
Devancing an American project competitor with Tom Cruise, Ioulia Peressild and Klim Chipenko had taken off on October 5 from the Russian cosmodrome from Baikonour in Kazakhstan, alongside the experienced cosmonaut Anton Chkaplerov.
Their film, temporarily entitled "The challenge", will stage a surgeon going aboard the ISS with the mission of saving the life of a cosmonaut.Two Russian cosmonauts currently stationed on the ISS and M.Shkaplerov will appear in this film as extras.
In a context of Russian-American rivalry, this cinematographic adventure also takes on the appearance of a new race for exploits in space, 60 years after the orbit of the first man by the USSR, Iouri Gagarin.
Rush to space
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Roscosmos had revealed its ambition last year, after the announcement of a shooting project aboard the ISS with Tom Cruise, the star of the saga "Mission Impossible", in partnership with NASA and the company SpaceX D'Elon Musk.
The Russian team's journey to the ISS was not smooth, the Cosmonaut Anton Chkaplerov having had to secure the vessel manually at the Orbital Laboratory.
And when the Russian flight controllers carried out tests on Friday on the Soyuz MS-18 capsule before bringing the team back to earth, the engines were activated suddenly and had briefly offset the ISS, without danger.
M.Chipenko had started to film even before the arrival aboard the ISS, during the stowage during which the actress attended the cosmonaut Anton Chkaplerov.
Their return to earth was documented by a shooting team and will appear in the film, told AFP Konstantin Ernst, the boss of the Russian channel Pervy Kanal, who co-produced the film.
This initiative comes in full non-scientific rush towards space, with the multiplication in recent months of leisure flights, like those of British billionaires Richard Branson and American Jeff Bezos.
The Russian space sector, which was the pride of Moscow in the Soviet era with in particular the orbit of the first satellite, of the first animal, of the first man and then of the first woman, is today undermined by the problems.
For Roscosmos, the film must restore a tarnished coat of arms by corruption scandals, series failures and the loss of the lucrative monopoly of inhabited flights to the ISS.
If the images have always accompanied the missions in space, from the first steps on the Moon in 1969 to the publications on the social networks of the French Station Thomas Pesquet, never a feature film of fiction has been shot in orbit.
In addition to the film, Roscosmos must soon lead a Japanese billionaire to the ISS, so as not to be distanced in the space of space tourism.
