Actress Yulia Peresild beats Tom Cruise to reach space first

In what seems like another Russia versus America situation in space, Russian actress Yulia Peresild took off for the International Space Station for her upcoming space movie, thereby beating American superstar Tom Cruise to become the first actress in space. Cruise is supposed to head to space for hits first space movie in the next few months.

Peresild and her director Klim Shipenko took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhastan in front of live TV cameras. The film duo along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov too off in the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft and reached the near Earth orbit 10 minutes later. The mission will last for 12 days during which the movies scenes will be shot inside the space station, with other cosmonauts also making appearances.

Russian actress beats Tom Cruise to space movie

The director has already called this movie an experiment, and agrees that there’s a 50-50 chance that things may or may not work. Prior to the departure, both Peresild and Shipenko underwent the training in the centrifuge as well as zero gravity flights.

Once the shooting ends, Peresild and her director will return to Earth on October 17 on a capsule commanded by cosmonaut Oled Novitksy, Novitsky has been staying in the ISS for six months now.

"The spacecraft is to dock with the Russian segment of the ISS two orbits after the launch. The ISS-66 crew flight is to last 174 days, while the spaceflight participants will stay at the ISS at least for 12 days," Roscomos said in a statement.

The movie plot and its budget has been kept a secret so far but Russian space agency Roscosmos gave a few hints. The film will oversee a Peresild as a female surgeon who is dispatched to the space station to save an astronaut. The film is titled The Challenge and will include a 35-40 minutes long sequence on the ISS.

The Russian space agency preponed the mission after it learned of NASA’s ambitions to send Tom Cruise to the space station for his space movie that will have a sequence shot in the space station.