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STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS AND USED WITH PERMISSION
First, a Russian actress, her director-cameraman and a veteran cosmonaut launched into orbit, chased the International Space Station, and successfully docked on Tuesday, setting the stage for an extraordinary film shoot.
Dressed in a bright red flight suit, Yulia Peresild, who will play the role of a surgeon making an emergency home call to the station in the movie “The Challenge,” was all smiles floating around the lab complex, telling Russian viewers that she felt like she was dreaming.
“Everything was new for us today, every 30 seconds brought something completely new,” she said during a brief video conference by Russian module Zvezda. “We just met the rest of the crew, cosmonauts and astronauts who have lived aboard the station for some time now. But I’m still in a dream.
“I always feel like it’s just a dream and I’m asleep,” she marveled. “It is almost impossible to believe that all of this has come true.”
Its director, Klim Shipenko, added: “It was amazing. It was tough, but it was great to get to the station. We were greeted by friends.
Soyuz MS-19 / 65S commander Anton Shkaplerov said his two newcomer space teammates performed “exactly as required by their training.” They did a great job. “
Adding some real-life drama to the rendezvous and docking, Shkaplerov had to take manual control on final approach when the Soyuz spacecraft’s automated rendezvous system was unable to handle the ” shabby data ”.
“Just like you trained for,” said a Russian flight controller. “It will be fine.”
Despite frequent communication interruptions and a “God be with us” from someone on the Russian radio station, Shkaplerov, a three-flight veteran, had no problem manually guiding the Soyuz MS-19 / spacecraft. 65S to dock with the Russian space station Module Rassvet.
The link was confirmed just over three hours after Shkaplerov, Peresild and Shipenko took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Soyuz 2.1a rocket at 4:55 a.m. EDT.
Live video from inside the cockpit showed the three crew members monitoring instruments and displays as the booster accelerated out of the dense lower atmosphere across a clear blue sky.
After a smooth eight-minute and 45-second ascent, the spacecraft separated from the third stage of the thruster, the solar panels deployed, and the crew departed for a two-orbit rendezvous with the space station.
The lab flew directly over the launch site approximately 33 seconds after takeoff, but moving at nearly five miles per second, the station outstripped the Soyuz and was 1,200 miles by the time the crew reached their preliminary orbit. .
Cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy photographed the distant Soyuz exhaust plume from the space station, tweeting “we expect you in 3 hours!”
Flying at a slightly lower altitude, and therefore moving faster than the space station, the Soyuz quickly overtook the lab for what turned out to be a manual docking. The hatches were opened after extensive leak checks to verify the airtightness of the structure.
French station commander Thomas Pesquet and his three SpaceX Crew Dragon teammates – Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide – welcomed their new teammates on board, as well as Novitskiy, Pyotréat and the NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who went into orbit last April on board. the Soyuz MS-18 / 64S spacecraft.
Peresild and Shipenko plan to spend 12 days aboard the space station, filming in the Russian segment of the lab before returning to Earth in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft with Novitskiy, which will complete a 190-day mission.
Shkaplerov will remain aboard the station and return to Earth next March or April aboard the MS-29 spacecraft with Dubrovnik and Vande Hei, who will have spent 355 days in orbit since their launch on April 9.
In the film “The Challenge”, Peresild will play a Russian doctor sent on short notice to the space station to treat a seriously ill cosmonaut. Novitskiy will play the patient while Shipenko will play the role of makeup artist, lighting director and cameraman.
“This work would have been enormous even on Earth,” Peresild said before the launch. “We will have ten days. But it won’t be like ten days of regular 12-hour filming, more like two to three hours a day, when cosmonauts can work with us. The rest of the time, Klim and I will shoot with me alone in the frame.
“Our only job is to shoot the film without interfering with the crew.”
Russians frequently mention Tom Cruise when discussing their mission, citing widely reported but unsubstantiated claims that the American actor is planning a similar trip.
“There was some competitiveness involved,” Shipenko said in a translation provided by Channel One Russia. “It made us speed up the production, the preparation process. Having a strong opponent that you can compete with is really important. The fact that Tom Cruise is passionate about his space project made him a serious contender.
NASA officials say no such visit to the space station is currently being planned.
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