Impressive collection of (12) preflight items produced as spares for the crew of Soyuz MS-18 Expedition 64—Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov, and Mark T. Vande Hei—composed of three ceremonial jackets and three jersey t-shirts, each of which was issued to the respective cosmonaut, whose name is printed in Cyrillic on the jacket’s upper left chest. The jackets feature the Russian flag, and the Soyuz MS-19 and Expedition 64 emblems, and each shirt bears a large image of Yuri Gagarin to the front and the back containing an image of the Vostok 1 and a quote from Gagarin in Cyrillic (translated): “I see the Earth! I distinguish the folds of the terrain, snow, forest…I observe the clouds…Beautiful! The beauty!” The seventh item is a ceremonial dual-sided flag for the mission, which measures 59 x 39. Each jacket-shirt combo, as well as the flag, is accompanied by its original carrying bag; all of the items are stored in a large ROSCOSMOS duffel bag. In overall fine condition.
Soyuz MS-18 was launched on April 9, 2021, and transported three members of the Expedition 64 crew to the ISS. The 146th crewed flight of a Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz MS-18 consists of Russian commander cosmonaut Oleg Novistkiy, Russian flight engineer cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, and American flight engineer NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. The spacecraft returned to Earth on October 17, 2021, following 191 days in space, and served as the landing vehicle for the Russian film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild, who spent about 12 days on ISS filming the movie, The Challenge, a yet-to-be-released space docudrama about a female doctor who agrees to go on a space mission to save a cosmonaut's life. It marks the first feature-length fiction film shot in space.
