The Soyuz MS-19 manned spacecraft, with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shippenko on board, separated from the third stage of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket and began an autonomous flight to the station, an announcer at the Baikonur cosmodrome said.
The Soyuz-2.1a rocket was launched on Tuesday from the 31st Baikonur pad at 11:55 a.m. Moscow time. The rendezvous with the ISS will take about 3 hours and 17 minutes. The docking with the Rassvet module of the ISS is scheduled for 3:12 p.m. Moscow timeframe on the same day.
The actress and director have been training at the Cosmonaut training center since May. During this time, they went through technical, physical, psychological and other types of training. The actress and director will fly to the ISS to shoot a space drama, the working title "The Challenge" ("Vyzov"), about a female doctor who goes into orbit to save the life of an astronaut. Russian cosmonauts Shkaplerov, Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov will also participate in the filming.
Peresild and Shipenko will spend 12 days in orbit and return to Earth in Soyuz MS-18 with cosmonaut Novitsky, who has been on the ISS since April. On October 17, Novitsky will return to Earth, while Shkaplerov and Dubrov will spend another 174 days on the station. Russian crew members of the ISS will have to meet manned spacecraft Soyuz MS-20 with space tourists and Soyuz MS-21 with cosmonauts, cargo ships Progress MS-18, nodal module Prichal, perform three spacewalks on the integration of the multipurpose laboratory module Nauka.
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Photo: Roscosmos
Based on materials from TASS