Actress Yulia Peresild, filmmaker Klim Shipenko and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, all of Russian nationality, began their way back to Earth this Sunday, after completing a mission that included filming, for the first time in orbit, some segments from the movie “Challenge”.
The Soyuz capsule that will return the crew to our planet undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at the scheduled time, 01.15 GMT on Sunday. The descent, reportedly, will take about three and a half hours, and will conclude in the steppe of Kazakhstan.
Peresild, 37, and Shipenko, 38, traveled on October 5 from the Russian Baikonur cosmodrome to the ISS. With them Novitskiy returns, who spent more than six months aboard the orbital structure and plays the sick cosmonaut in the film.
According to some evidence that transcended the plot, a surgeon played by Peresild is rushed to the space station to save a crew member who needs an urgent operation in orbit.
The first fiction feature film in space, whose budget was kept in total secrecy will serve as “experience”, said Shipenko, who was in charge of the camera, makeup and lighting in the small space of the Russian segment.
The actress, the director and the Russian cosmonaut at a press conference, before the trip into space. AFP photo
“I don’t have anyone to ask for advice, I don’t have a cameraman to ask how to shoot with a window light,” the filmmaker said before setting off on the 12-day trip.
Peresild and Shipenko, figures of Russian cinema, underwent an accelerated training to learn to withstand the violent acceleration of takeoff and to move in the absence of gravity.
In April, for the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned flight into space, a symbolic victory for the Soviet Union over the United States in the midst of the Cold War, Vladimir Putin proclaimed that Russia must continue as a great space power.
The country still wants to get involved in space tourism, which has accelerated in recent months with the flights of billionaires Jeff Bezos, an American, and the British Richard Branson.
The Soyuz MS-19, at the time of takeoff. Photo: Roscosmos Space Agency via AP
As detailed, seven astronauts remain aboard the orbital station: Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov; Americans Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur; as well as the French Thomas Pesquet, from the European Space Agency, and the Japanese Aki Hoshide.
The Voyage of “Captain Kirk”
This Wednesday, William Shatner, who played the legendary Captain Kirk of the Star Trek series, became, at the age of 90, the oldest person to reach space. He did it on the second flight with passengers on board completed by the company of billionaire Jeff Bezos, who made the first trip last July.
“I never imagined that, it is beautiful, it is soft, it is pure blue, what you see below is light and what you see up there is total darkness. It is the most profound experience I had, I do not think I can recover,” Shatner said before of covering her face with her hands to cry. Beside him, Jeff Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, hugged him.
The images were broadcast live on the channel that the company has on YouTube. There, the small capsule could be seen landing in the middle of the Texas desert with its four crew members in perfect condition and after a journey that lasted 10 minutes and 18 seconds.
William Shatner with Jeff Bezos, after landing. Photo: AFP
The New Shepard rocket that carried it, along with three other passengers, is made up of a launcher and an ultra-modern capsule that detaches in flight.
Propelled in this way, it goes beyond the so-called Kármán Line, at an altitude of 100 kilometers, which marks the limit of space according to international convention. Passengers can separate from their seats and float for a few moments in zero gravity.
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