Tom Cruise gets a flight date for his space movie

Tom Cruise will be heading to the heavens to make the first action movie to be shot in space in October, 2021.

An under-the-radar tweet from the Space Shuttle Almanac, which emerged last weekend, appears to confirm that Cruise will be travelling with director Doug Liman on Elon Musk's SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

Read more: Tom Cruise’s most dangerous stunts

They will head to the International Space Station with the veteran NASA pilot Michael Lopez-Alegria at the helm.

According to the tweet, which lists the passenger manifest on the flight, there is still a spare seat on the mission.

NASA confirmed in May this year that Cruise would be heading to space to make a movie with Bourne Identity filmmaker Liman.

“We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make @NASA's ambitious plans a reality,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridestine.

Little is known about the nature of the movie as yet, though the scale of it likely to be pretty limited in terms of crew.

However, it is thought that Liman, who has worked with Cruise on movies including Edge of Tomorrow and American Made, has penned a draft screenplay for the project.

The Crew Dragon made history on 30 May this year, blasting into space in a partnership between NASA and Musk's SpaceX, ferrying astronauts to the ISS.

Cruise, meanwhile, is currently back to filming the latest in the Mission: Impossible movie series with Christopher McQuarrie, after the production was curtailed by the coronavirus lockdown back in March.

Returning to the action sequel's set, he filmed a death-defying motorbike stunt in Norway earlier this month, launching from a ramp from the top of a mountain into a valley before parachuting to safety.