Russians claim another space first with scenes from a movie film aboard the International Space Station.
A Russian actress and her director-cameraman, wrapping up a 12-day movie shoot aboard the International Space Station, returned to Earth Sunday and promptly filmed a few additional scenes that will be part of the film’s conclusion. With cameras rolling, actress Julia Peresild, playing the role of a surgeon sent to the station to treat a critically ill cosmonaut, was pulled from the Soyuz descent module and carried to a nearby recliner where she pretended to be just back from her make-believe mission. Soyuz commander Oleg Novitskiy, who was wrapping up a 191-day stay in space, played the patient during shooting aboard the space station and again on the ground after touchdown, patiently enduring multiple takes before filming was halted. All three crew members, looking fit and chatting easily with support crews, were then carried to a nearby medical tent for traditional post-landing checks before being flown to Karaganda to board a jet for the trip back to Star City near Moscow. Peresild and director Klim Shipenko were launched to the space station on October 5, riding into orbit aboard the Soyuz MS-19/65S spacecraft under command of veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov. They were welcomed aboard by Novitskiy, cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. While in orbit, Peresild and Shipenko, assisted by Novitskiy, Shkaplerov and Dubrov, shot scenes for a movie called «The Challenge» about a surgeon — Peresild — making an emergency house call to the space station.
