Moscow: The International Space Station (ISS) has been placed to a higher altitude to prepare for the arrival of Russia’s “Challenge” movie’s filming crew arrival, a spokesperson for the Roscosmos state space corporation told Sputnik on Saturday.
Initially, the orbit was going to be raised on Thursday but this was delayed at the US request because of the technical unpreparedness of the US segment of the ISS for the manoeuvre.
“The correction [of the orbit] has been successfully completed,” the spokesperson said.
The height of the orbit has been raised by 1.2 kilometres (less than a mile) to 420 kilometres.
The Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft with Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild is going to be launched on October 5. Shipenko and Peresild will focus on shooting the “Challenge” feature movie on the ISS, and after that will head for the Earth on board of the Soyuz MS-18 along with cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky on October 17.
