Russian film crew blasts off into orbit to make 1st movie in space

In a historic first, Russia has launched an actor and a film director into orbit in an attempt to make a feature film — a project the nation’s space chief has hailed as a chance to raise the prestige of its space program, and the latest twist in decades of Russia-U.S. rivalry. Actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko blasted off Tuesday for the International Space Station (ISS) in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft together with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran of three space missions. Their Soyuz MS-19 lifted off as scheduled from the Russian space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan in a 12-day mission. Last month, the film crew spoke about the movie they intend to film at the ISS. “This movie is built around a story of an ordinary person... a doctor who had nothing to do with space exploration and never thought about it is offered to travel to the ISS... and save a cosmonaut’s life,“ Shipenko told a news conference. For more info, please go to https