A Russian actress and director were set to return to Earth on Sunday after spending 12 days in the International Space Station (ISS) shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit. If the project stays on track, the Russian crew will beat a Hollywood project announced last year by ‘Mission Impossible’ star Tom Cruise together with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Actress Yulia Peresild, 37, and film director Klim Shipenko, 38, blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan earlier this month, travelling to the ISS with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov to film scenes for ‘The Challenge’. Russian film beats Tom Cruise’ space movie, to become first feature shot in outer space The movie’s plot, which has been mostly kept under wraps along with its budget, centres around a female surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut. Shkaplerov, 49, and the two Russian cosmonauts who were already aboard the ISS are said to have cameo roles in the film.