A Soyuz space capsule carrying a cosmonaut and two Russian filmmakers has separated from the International Space Station and is heading for the Earth.
The separation took place on schedule at 0115 GMT (1215 AEDT) on Sunday with Oleg Novitskiy, Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko aboard for a descent of about three-and-a-half hours hours.
Actress Peresild and film director Shipenko rocketed to the space station on October 5 for a 12-day stint on the station to film segments of a movie titled Challenge, in which a surgeon played by Peresild rushes to the space station to save a crew member who needs an urgent operation in orbit.
Novitskiy, who spent more than six months aboard the space station, plays the ailing cosmonaut in the movie.
The space capsule is to land in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
According to Russia, it is the first feature film to be shot in the cosmos and not on studio sets on Earth. The United States is also planning to shoot a movie there, but a date has not yet been set.
Russian space agency Roscosmos has also said the aim of the film is to make the industry more appealing to younger people.
Critics, however, say that the project was expensive and the money would have been better spent on research.
Seven astronauts remain aboard the space station: Russia’s Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov; Americans Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur; Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency; and Japan’s Aki Hoshide.
with DPA
