[9] Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov (commander) and the crew of the film "The Challenge": actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko, will go to the ISS on the Soyuz MS-19.

[10][11] The alternates chosen after passing the medical committee are: New Drama Theater actress Alyona Mordovina, director Alexei Dudin[12] and the commander Oleg Artemyev.

[21] The film, which according to Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, is an "experiment to see if Roscosmos can prepare two ordinary people to fly in about 3 or 4 months" has received opposition from the scientific and aerospace communities, as to the fact that they remove trained cosmonauts from their flights, a misuse of public money,[22] or even that using the station's resources for non-scientific purposes would be illegal.

[23] Sergei Krikalev, director of crewed programs at Roscosmos, reportedly lost his position by speaking out against the project,[24] but was reinstated after a few days following protests from cosmonauts on and off active duty.

[27] On 3 February 2021, the State Commission for Testing of the Piloted Space Systems, chaired by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin, approved the latest ISS schedule for 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.

It spent 29 hours in autonomous flight, waiting for ballistic conditions for docking, and re-docked to the nadir (Earth-facing) port of Nauka on 22 October 2021, at 04:21:07 UTC.

Nor can they fly around the ISS, because it is made only to safely operate after the spacecraft had entered a narrow cone-shaped zone extending from the main axis of a destination port that is Nauka nadir in this case.

[28] This relocation will allow Roscosmos to prepare for the next step in the expansion of the Russian Orbital Segment, this time with the Prichal module.