Russia Beats U.S. in Putting Actor in Space

We recently told you about William Shatner's plans to hitch a ride with Blue Origin; it looks like Russia has beat us to the punch in getting an actor into space.

While Shatner's ride on Blue Origin is not much more than a (seemingly) futuristic amusement park ride, the Russians are on an actual mission.

According to the Associated Press, a Russian spacecraft left this world with one cosmonaut, one film director, and one actor on board. The mission? To make the world's first movie in orbit.

The actor, Yulia (Julia) Peresild, is a well-established performer with almost 50 credits to her name on IMDB. She has been nominated for industry awards for best actress or best supporting actress 7 times, taking home 4 trophies in the process.

The director, Klim Shipenko, is no stranger to awards, either, with 6 nominations and 3 wins for Best Director and Best Film (according to IMDB).

The movie they will be filming is called "The Challenge". Peresild plays the role of a surgeon who goes to space on an emergency mission to save the life of a cosmonaut who suffers a heart attack.

In preparing for the ride into space, Peresild said that the training was difficult:

The training "was psychologically, physically and morally hard." - Yulia Peresild, AP News

The spacecraft they blasted off in successfully docked with the International Space Station after a 3 1/2 hour journey. They did encounter an issue during the trip: the automatic docking system malfunctioned, so the trained cosmonaut had to manually control the spacecraft's docking maneuver.

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The crew plans to spend 12 days a the International Space Station to film segments for the movie, using the cosmonauts currently residing on the satellite as actors in the film. Cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy has been tapped to play the character with the heart issue and will be the one to take command of the Russian spaceship on its return to earth on October 17th.

The filming will only be taking place in the Russian module of the International Space Station. Upon the crew's return to earth, filming will resume.

I'm okay with subtitles in movies, so this is one I will be eager to see.