Russian film crew shoot first movie in Space aboard ISS, 'safely' return to Earth

Russian Film crew, comprising producer-director Klim Shipenko, actor Yulia Peresild made a safe landing on Earth on Sunday after spending 12 days aboard International Space Station (ISS). The crew was accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos who spent 191 days in space on his third mission. The trio departed the ISS in their Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft at 9.14 pm, NASA said in a blogpost adding that their spacecraft "landed on Earth at 12.35 am EDT Sunday, October 17 in Kazakhstan (10.35 am Kazakhstan time), southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan."

Russian helicopters retrieved the crew and the cosmonaut from a city in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, after ensuring their medical stability. Then they headed for boarding a Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center aircraft for a safe return to their training base in Star City, Russia, stated NASA. The spaceflight participants Peresild and Shipenko are scheduled to undergo a 10-day rehab program to help them readjust to Earth's atmosphere.

Take a look at the video of the Russian crew landing on Earth:

Russian crew wraps 12-days shoot in space

Creating history, Peresild and Shipenko joined at the ISS on October 5, as space participants to shoot the scenes of the first-ever movie on orbit. Their trip to space to shoot “Challenge" was a commercial agreement between Roscosmos and Moscow-based media entities, reported NASA. The crew blasted off in a Russian Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, together with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran of three space missions, the Associated Press reported.

Russian director-producer Shipenko shot vital segments of the scene during the visit to space in which Peresild plays a heart surgeon, who rushed to the ISS to save an astronaut. During a pre-flight interview, Peresild briefed about the rigorous training and discipline the duo had to undergo before they embarked upon the journey. "It was psychologically physically and morally hard," the news agency quoted the actor as she explained during the presser.

(With inputs from AP)

(Image: Twitter/@Space_Station/SpaceDotCom)