WASHINGTON — Russia announced on Thursday the actress and director that will fly to the International Space Station to make one of the first movies in space.
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said that actress Yulia Peresild, 36, will star in the movie, and Klim Shipenko, 37, will direct it. The movie is titled "Vyzov" meaning "The Challenge."
The news comes about a year after NASA announced that "Mission Impossible" and "Top Gun" actor Tom Cruise planned to film a movie aboard the International Space Station.
When Cruise's movie plans were first announced, then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency was excited to work on the project.
"We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make NASA’s ambitious plans a reality," Bridenstine said in a tweet.
Cruise and his team are planning to travel to the floating space outpost on a SpaceX rocket, however, dates and details about the launch and movie have yet to be announced.
Russia said its film crew will take up two of the three seats aboard the October 5th launch of Russia’s Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft. However, before takeoff, the crew will undergo parts of Russia’s standard cosmonaut training.
The flight training for the Russian actor and director will start no later than June 1 and will include centrifuge and vibration tests, flights on a zero-gravity plane and parachute training.
The movie "The Challenge" is about a female surgeon's mission to perform an operation on a cosmonaut too sick to return to Earth.
