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Italian astronaut backs space tourism and outer space cinema production

Any space launch allows you to learn, collect information, and improve and bolster the reliability of technology, Samantha Cristoforetti pointed out

ROME, December 17. /TASS/. European Space Agency astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, admitted that she would be interested in watching a movie filmed in space.

"I would be fascinated in watching this film!" she said in an interview with TASS on Friday.

The astronaut who will be the first European female to command the International Space Station (ISS) doesn’t see anything odd about space tourism. According to her, there are some benefits to it. "I’m convinced that there is a room for tourism [in space], now it is reality, but it is affordable only for wealthy people, or recently, ordinary people were offered the opportunity to travel to space by well-off individuals," she said.

"I can’t say that space tourism is my passion, but I am not critical of it, on the contrary, I see a slew of advantages in it. Any space launch allows you to learn, collect information, and improve and bolster the reliability of technology. In this context, it can only be welcomed!" the astronaut insisted.

In October, on board the ISS, a movie called "Challenge" was filmed in space for the first time in history. The motion picture tells the story of a female doctor who agrees to go on a space mission to save a cosmonaut's life. Actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko spent 12 days aboard the ISS. Cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov also appeared in some of the movie’s episodes. The space drama is a joint project of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Channel One TV and the Yellow, Black and White studio. According to Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin, the production of the movie should be completed by the end of 2022.

The launch of the mission led by Cristoforetti, also consisting of NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins, aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon is scheduled for the spring of 2022 from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Cristoforetti is the first European female astronaut to lead a mission to the ISS. This flight will be her second.