Russian film crew blast offs to make first film in space

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian actor and a film director have rocketed to space on a mission to make the world’s first movie in orbit.

Actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko blasted off Tuesday for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft together with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran of three space missions. Their Soyuz MS-19 lifted off as scheduled from the Russian space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Peresild and Klimenko are to film segments of a new movie titled “Challenge,” in which a surgeon played by Peresild rushes to the space station to save a crew member who suffers a heart condition. After 12 days on the space outpost, they are set to return to Earth with another Russian cosmonaut.