What you need to know about the film crew making the first film in space this week

A Roscosmos Soyuz rocket is due to be launched Tuesday morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, sending a Russian camera crew and a cosmonaut to the International Space Station. Here are the details of the mission and how you can watch the launch online.

This year has been very eventful in space, as US companies Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX have all managed to send tourists to the Last Frontier for the very first time. For Russia, it’s old hat. In 2001, Roscosmos succeeded transported American millionaire Dennis Tito at the ISS, who shelled out $ 20 million for the historic theft.

Roscosmos is now looking to try something a little different. Russian space agency sends director and actress at the ISS, where they will shoot scenes from an upcoming film titled Vyzov, Where Challenge in English (a literal translation would be The call, for what it’s worth). The film is a joint project involving Roscosmos, Channel One and the Yellow, Black and White studio.

DDirector Klim Shipenko, 37, and actress Yulia Peresild, 35, as well as cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, 49, are expected to be launched aboard a Soyuz-2.1a rocket on October 5 at 11:55 a.m. from Moscow (4:55 a.m. EDT or 1:55 a.m. PDT). Channel One will broadcast the launch live on its website and on Youtube (below). Roscosmos will also have a food available.

The spaceship must reach the ISS three hours and 17 minutes after launch, which is quite fast, as far as these things go. Shkaplerov will join the crew of Expedition 66 and stay until March of next year, while Shipenko and Peresild will remain on the ISS for at least 12 days, with a provisional return scheduled for October 17.

The filmmakers are hoping to raise between 35 and 40 minutes of footage during their brief stay. Peresild will play Zhenya, an operating surgeon who only has one month to prepare for a flight to the ISS, where she will attempt to save the life of a sick cosmonaut. She was chosen for the role following an open competition and after passing physical and medical examinations. Finalist Alyona Mordovina is the mission’s secondary actress. Novitsky will play the role of the cosmonaut who needs medical assistance, according to to the official Russian news agency TASS.

Using the ISS as a film set is sure to provide an authentic sense of what it’s like to live and work in space. The closest precedent is Apollo 13, in which the microgravity scenes were Pull inside NASA’s KC-135 plane, known as the “vomit comet”. Because the periods of weightlessness were limited to 25 seconds, the cast and crew had to fly 612 parabolas to capture the required footage. Needless to say, this won’t be a problem on the ISS, where microgravity is in abundance.

Over the past several months, the film crew has been preparing at the facilities of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“We have taken a crash course in many important things that cosmonauts study for many years. We tried to get them under control in four months. Of course, it is very fast. We had a lot of theory, practice, endurance, sport, anything imaginable ”, Shipenko Recount TASS. The goal, he said, was not to achieve full-fledged cosmonaut training, but “to prepare as a participant in space flight.”

As part of their training, the film crew, along with their respective reinforcements, studied the design of the Soyuz probe and the Russian segment of the ISS. They also received emergency response training, which included water landing simulations and weightless training aboard a zero g aircraft. As TASS reports, Peresild “hadn’t realized how much effort preparing the project would require,” but even in hindsight, she would not have given up on the opportunity.

The Roscosmos website describes it as a “science and education project”, but as the Russian space agency admitted last year, the “film aims to popularize Russian space activities” and to “glorify [the] cosmonaut profession. Some Russian scientists and former cosmonauts have complained about the mission, claiming the film diverts resources that could have been used elsewhere. At the end of August, producers were still looking funding for the project.

Following: New cracks on ISS reveal deteriorating state of Russian segment.