BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, October 4. /TASS/. The Challenge project for filming a movie in outer space will help reduce the training period for non-cosmonauts, Russian Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov told an online news conference at TASS organized jointly by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, TV Channel One, and the Cosmonaut Training Center.

"This project will show that if need be, Roscosmos <…> will be able to reduce the training period and send a person who has no background in cosmonautics to outer space," he said.

The Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket is to be launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 11:55 Moscow time on October 5. The Soyuz MS-19 spaceship will take cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko to the International Space Station. The spaceship will reach orbit some nine minutes after launch and will approach the International Space Station (ISS) in a double-loop pattern. It will take about three hours and 17 minutes for the spaceship to reach the ISS.

Peresild and Shipenko are expected to film the first-ever movie in outer space. The drama under the working title Challenge is a joint project by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, TV Channel One, and the Yellow, Black and White studio. The film will tell a story of a doctor, who has nothing to do with space exploration but is forced to fly to outer space to save a cosmonaut’s life.