Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft carrying Russian filmmakers lands on Earth

The filmmakers arrived at the station on October 5, 2021, as spaceflight participants for 12 days of filming their movie “Challenge". They arrived aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft with Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who will stay in space until April 2022.

The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft carrying three people, Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Novitskiy, Russian actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko, landed on Earth at 12:35 a.m. EDT, October 17 in Kazakhstan. The trio departed the International Space Station at 9:14 p.m.

The filmmakers arrived at the station on October 5, 2021, as spaceflight participants for 12 days of filming their movie “Challenge". They arrived aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft with Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who will stay in space until April 2022.

Novitskiy, on the other hand, returns to Earth after 191 days in space on his third mission that spanned 3,056 orbits of Earth and 80.9 million miles. During these missions, the Russian cosmonaut completed three spacewalks totalling 22 hours, 38 minutes.

Touchdown after 191 days in space for @Novitskiy_ISS and 12 days in space for two Russian filmmakers! More... https://t.co/CrQl3O1BUl pic.twitter.com/kzXlCTr0og

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) October 17, 2021

With the trio's departure, the space station's population has decreased to 7. The seven-person crew includes commander Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, and Mark Vande Hei, JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.

Later this month, NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts will also arrive at the space station. The Crew-3 mission, carrying NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron as well as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, will launch aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket on October 30.