Slated for two weeks of filming aboard the International Space Station (ISS), actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko become the first humans to film part of a feature-length film in space, beating out poor old Tom Cruise, who since 2020 had made his intentions to film a movie aboard the ISS clear enough to NASA.

The Challenge will be a big-budget Russian blockbuster based on the story of a top surgeon (Peresild) who is called upon to ascend to the Russian-module of the ISS for an emergency procedure.

A Soyuz rocket departed the Earth at 4:55 a.m. on October 5th from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and arrived three hours later carrying Ms. Peresild, Mr. Shipenko and their experienced astronautical guide, Anton Shkaplerov.

After an automated docking procedure had to be aborted due to what a translator described deliciously as "ratty comms" to the New York Times, Shkaplerov brought the Soyuz craft in manually.

"I still feel that it's all just a dream and I am asleep," said Peresild, opening the hatch and floating into the space laboratory. "It is almost impossible to believe that this all came to reality."

The pair will gather around 35 minutes of footage before departing on the 17th of October, leaving Shkaplerov behind to work.

After the film launches on Russia's Channel One, an inevitable reality series is planned to follow.