Russia sends actress and director to International Space Station to make first movie in space

A movie director and an actress are joining a cosmonaut for a mission to the International Space Station as Russia bids to make the first movie in orbit.

The mission, called MS-19, saw the crew blast off from Kazakhstan earlier from where they will dock with the space station and shoot the film during a 12-day stay.

It is Russia’s latest attempt to rival the US, where the first all-civilian crew on board a rocket recently orbited the earth.

It also aims to get in first before a Hollywood project announced earlier this year, which involves actor Tom Cruise, NASA and SpaceX.

The three Russians took off on a Soyuz-2.1a rocket at 9.55am UK time and it is expected to take them several hours to reach the station, which orbits the earth at an altitude of around 220 miles (354km).

They will join two Russian cosmonauts already on board the ISS, along with several others including Americans.

On Russian state TV station Channel One, a countdown clock has been running and news anchors have been framing the development as a significant breakthrough by Russia that the rest of the world is watching closely.

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A live feed on the TASS news agency Twitter feed showed the view from the side of the rocket as it launched.

The Russian movie is called The Challenge and focuses on a story of a doctor, played by actress Yulia Peresild, who is asked to go to the space station to save the life of a cosmonaut.

One of cosmonauts already on the ISS will also appear in the film with Ms Peresild, which will be directed on location by Klim Shipenko.

The director told a news conference in Russia on Monday another of the cosmonauts on the ISS will also be involved in the filming, but the cosmonauts will not play themselves.

Not taking anything to chance, there was a backup crew available if any of the cosmonauts, or other crew members were unable to take part.

The director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, told the Tass news agency that he hopes the film will attract the “cream of the crop” to his country’s space sector.

He said: “This mission is special. We have people going into space who are neither tourists nor professional cosmonauts…as a result of this work, we hope to obtain a truly serious work of art and a whole new development of the promotion of space technologies.”

He did admit, however, that the crew “are nervous…anything can happen.”

Russia’s space industry has in recent years been dogged by delays, accidents and corruption scandals as US-based private firms backed by wealthy tycoons have pushed the technology ever onwards.

First the Soviet Union, then Russia, have been locked in a fiercely fought battle to be the first nation to explore space and break new boundaries since soon after the Second World War.

Russia launched the first satellite and put the first man and woman in space, but astronauts from America’s NASA made it to the Moon’s surface first.

Russia is developing a new spaceport, called the Vostochny Cosmodrome, but it is years away from being ready to launch humans into space, officials say.

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