By Mathew Bodner - NBC News
MOSCOW - Humans have been exploring space for 60 years, which means that most spectacular "firsts" have long been attributed in history books.
But Russia believes it is ready for one more:
the first film shot in outer space.
And as in the old days, it is competing with the United States to do so.
Russia's space agency Roscosmos announced Thursday that it has selected its crew to feature in the
film, which will be titled
Challenge
.
The star will be actress Yulia Peresild, 36, and the director will be Klim Shepenko, 37.
This project was unveiled last year, shortly after the American actor, Tom Cruise, and the Space Administration (NASA) announced their intention to collaborate in the making of a film on the International Space Station.
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Peresild, the star of several Russian films, was chosen from hundreds of candidates in an audition that promised "international fame."
The team will occupy two of the three seats aboard the Russian Soyuz mission that will take off in October for the space station.
Before, however, they will have to complete some of the standard training for Russian cosmonauts.
"Among other things, they will have to perform
centrifugal and vibration tests, introduction and training flights in zero-gravity aircraft
, and parachute training," Roscosmos reported.
This "space drama" is one of the favorite projects of the bombastic administrator of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin.
Very little is known about the film's plot, which seems secondary to the show itself.
When the project was announced last year, Konstantine Ernst, head of Channel 1 of Russian public television, who is collaborating with Roscosmos, said that
it would not be a science fiction film
but a realistic representation of what space travel will soon be. .
"It's a movie about how a person who is not connected in any way to space exploration, due to various reasons and personal debt, ends up a month later in orbit," Ernst said in an interview in September 2020. "That it's all I can tell you, ”he added.
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The audition was announced in November, to search for an actress between the ages of 25 and 40, 110 to 155 pounds (50 to 70 kilograms), and capable of passing various physical tests.
The decision to send the team on the October flight of the Soyuz mission comes at a
time of uncertainty for the Russian space program
.
Relations with NASA, its partner in the last 20 years, are frayed by tensions on a larger scale in the bilateral relationship between the two countries, which have affected cooperation in space.
And Rozogin, like other officials, are hinting that Russia may soon disengage from the United States and ally with China in international space exploration.
Rozogin threatened in 2014 to leave NASA without seats on Russian rockets, which at the time were the only way to send Americans to the space station, a $ 100 billion international project, in retaliation for government-imposed sanctions. of Barack Obama.
Recently, he threatened to cancel his collaboration on the space station.
The United States has depended on Russia since it retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011, but last year it finally
saw the launch of a new
American
space vehicle
.
In October, NASA paid for its last flight aboard the Soyuz mission, although another American traveled in April, in this case without a direct payment.
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Russia now needs to find other ways to pay for its launches.
One of the most obvious (beyond receiving money from public television) is space tourism.
Another launch will take place in December, but
instead of Russian cosmonauts, two Japanese space tourists will travel on board
, Russia announced Thursday.
It is not the first time that Roscomos has sent tourists into space (so far they have all been wealthy businessmen or celebrities) to pay for its manned flights, but the agency had not done so for a decade.
The last was in 2009, just before NASA retired its shuttles and became fully dependent on the Soyuz mission.
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One of the two tourists that will take off in December will be the Japanese billionaire Yasuka Maezawa, who already made headlines in 2018 when he
announced that he had bought a trip around the moon
on the Starship spacecraft of the American company SpaceX, a huge vehicle that, like the ferries, it can take more than one trip, and it is not finished yet but is designed to colonize Mars.
Maezawa summoned eight candidates from around the world to join in on that trip, which is scheduled for 2023.