KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — A pair of NASA astronauts have finally taken their historic ride on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner making its first-ever human spaceflight Wednesday morning.

Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams were back for a third time in a month once again taking a ride out to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 to climb on board the spacecraft sitting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that lifted off amid mostly clear skies at 10:52 a.m. to take the pair to the International Space Station.

“Let’s get going,” said Wilmore minutes before launch. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket and let’s push it to the heavens where all these tough Americans have prepared it to be.”

Let’s relive liftoff of #AtlasV carrying #Starliner #CFT for @NASA and @BoeingSpace! pic.twitter.com/MxlAZE45aK

— ULA (@ulalaunch) June 5, 2024

The pair are flying the Crew Flight Test mission, a followup to two uncrewed test flights of Starliner, the first of which came in 2019. That mission was a partial failure as it was not able to rendezvous with the ISS forcing a 2 1/2-year delay to Boeing’s program to remedy hardware, software and management issues. The second uncrewed test flight in 2022 made it to the ISS, but post-launch review and preparation for the CFT brought further delays with more hardware issues popping up.

But half a decade later, Williams and Wilmore were set to fly, entering quarantine on April 22. Finally, on May 6, they tried for the first time to take off from the Space Coast, but an issue with a fluttering valve on ULA’s upper Centaur stage scrubbed that attempt with about two hours to go on the countdown clock. Then a second attempt this past Saturday was scrubbed within four minutes of launch because of ULA computers not synching at the launch pad.

“I am very impressed with my colleagues for being such optimists and such professionals.” said NASA astronaut for future Starliner crew member Mike Fincke during NASA’s live commentary leading up to launch. “They’ve been in quarantine for a long time. You know we’ve been waiting for over five years to get Starliner launched, but they are very, very excited about today. You can see that they’re focused on getting the job done and they are very ready for this mission.”

In the end, the third attempt went smoothly.

“Everything was fine. No hiccups, no drama and nothing to worry about,” Fincke said. “So I was really happy for Butch and Suni and happy with the whole team. … Now we just got to get to space station.”

The duo began suiting up before 6 a.m. at KSC’s Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building venturing out after 7:30 a.m. to climb aboard the updated Starliner-themed Airstream Astrovan for the ride over to neighboring Cape Canaveral and make their way back on board the Starliner spacecraft.

Before driving over, they played a traditional prelaunch game with chief of the astronaut office, Joe Acaba, not leaving until they had lost to Acaba — this time in a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. The idea is that losing that game is the worst thing that happens on a launch day.

“Speaking as a child of the 70s, a lot of us watched “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and Mr. Rogers would tell us to take our time to do it right, and that’s what we’re doing here,” Fincke said.

Just before 9 a.m., teams waited the conclusion of a weather brief before moving forward with hatch closure, but were given the go for hatch closure with less than two hours to go before launch.

“We are ready. We’re smiling out here, see you in a couple weeks,” said Wilmore.

Pictures: Launch day for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on Crew Flight Test

The astronauts will spend just over 25 hours making their way to the ISS set to dock Thursday at 12:15 p.m., where they will spend about eight days on board before returning to Earth for a landing in one of five locations in the desert in the southwestern United States.

If successful, this will be the final required mission for Boeing under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to achieve certification and set up regular rotational missions to the ISS, sharing duties with SpaceX.

“We need that access,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. “So right now we have we have one provider giving us that access to the space station. This will give us a second provider, which means if we have a problem with either, we have ways to get our crews to and from station, which helps keep the tempo that we’ve had for 23 years of having humans in low-Earth orbit, but also that opportunity to get the crews back if there’s an issue at all and keep that presence going.”

Wilmore and Williams will spend time on both the way up and down from the ISS testing out manual control overrides among other facets of the mostly automated spacecraft.

“There’s a thought of how things should be, but then there’s the reality how things need to be,” said Wilmore ahead of the launch attempt. “That’s what this test is all — everything we do is test. It’s been a process over the years that is such a benefit in all aspects of the capabilities of this spacecraft, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”

The pair are former Navy test pilots and veterans of two spaceflight each, with both having traveled on board Russia Soyuz capsules as well as the space shuttle. Wilmore is commander and joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2000 while Williams joined in 1998.

Williams was given the honor to name the capsule after it landed, and dubbed it Calypso, in deference to oceanographer Jacques Cousteau’sfamed vessel. The zero-gravity indicator for the mission follows the maritime theme, a stuffed narwhal that is also named Calypso.

The flight comes just over four years since SpaceX made its first crewed flight to the ISS with its Crew Dragon spacecraft, which has since flown 13 times carrying 50 humans to space. That includes the four members of Crew-8 awaiting along with the rest of the seven-person crew of Expedition 71 aboard the ISS.

Starliner is only the sixth ever U.S.-based spacecraft to fly with NASA astronauts following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttleand SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Williams is the first woman to fly on an orbital test flight among NASA’s spacecraft.

Starliner will also become the first U.S.-based capsule to make a land touchdown as Crew Dragon, Apollo, Gemini and Mercury all made waterlandings, as will the Artemis program’s Orion capsule that has yet to fly with humans. Russia’s Soyuz, though, features land touchdowns.

It also marked a return of human launches from Cape Canaveral’s launch pads, which last saw a crewed flight in 1968 with the launch of Apollo7. Every Apollo mission afterward as well as the space shuttle and Crew Dragon launches have come from nearby Kennedy Space Center.

It’s the first time an Atlas V has flown with humans as well, although earlier iterations of the Atlas rocket flew several human spaceflights in the early 1960s including John Glenn’s historic trip to space as the first American to each orbit in 1962.

This also marked the 100th launch of an Atlas V rocket, and Wilmore had a special message for ULA after launch.

“They’ve been a member of the family for a long time, but now it’s official, and we want to welcome them to human spaceflight,” he said.

By AAMER MADHANI (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine has used U.S weapons to strike inside Russia in recent days, according to a Western official familiar with the matter.

The weapons were used under recently approved guidance from President Joe Biden allowing American arms to be used to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

The official was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Biden’s directive allows for U.S.-supplied weapons to be used to strike Russian forces that are attacking or preparing to attack. It does not change U.S. policy that directs Ukraine not to use American-provided ATACMS or long-range missiles and other munitions to strike offensively inside Russia, U.S. officials have said.

Ukrainian officials had stepped up calls on the U.S. to allow Kyiv’s forces to defend themselves against attacks originating from Russian territory. Kharkiv sits just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Russian border and has come under intensified Russian attack.

In advancing in the northeast Kharkiv region, Russian forces have exploited a lengthy delay in the replenishment of U.S. military aid. In addition, Western Europe’s inadequate military production has slowed crucial deliveries to the battlefield for Ukraine.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that he could not confirm that Ukraine had used U.S. weapons at targets in Russia.

“We’re just not in a position on a day-to-day basis of knowing exactly what the Ukrainians are firing at what,” Kirby said. “It’s certainly at a tactical level.”

According to a June 3 report from the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces struck a Russian S-300/400 air defense battery in Belgorod Oblast, likely with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, on June 1 or June 2. The air defense system was located roughly 60 kilometers (about 40 miles) from the current front line in northern Kharkiv Oblast and more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the city of Kharkiv, which is within the range of HIMARS, the institute reported.

Confirmation of the strikes comes as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited Qatar, which along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has been a key mediators in prisoner swaps and other negotiations between Russia and Ukraine since the war began.

—-

Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed to this report.

By JAMEY KEATEN (Associated Press)

GENEVA (AP) — U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called Wednesday for a “windfall” tax on profits of fossil fuel companies to help pay for the fight against global warming, decrying them as the “godfathers of climate chaos.”

Guterres spoke from the American Museum of Natural History in New York in a bid to revive focus on climate change at a time when many national elections, and conflict in places like Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan this year have seized much of the international spotlight.

In a bare-knuckled speech timed for World Environment Day, Guterres drew on new data and projections to trumpet his case against Big Oil: The European Union’s climate watching agency reported that last month was the hottest May ever, marking the 12th straight monthly record high.

The EU’s Copernicus climate change service, a global reference for tracking world temperatures, cited an average surface air temperature of 15.9 C (60.6 F) last month — or 1.52 C higher than the estimated May average before industrial times.

The burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — is the main contributor to global warming caused by human activity.

Meanwhile, the U.N. weather agency predicted an 80% chance that average global temperatures will surpass the 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) target set in the landmark Paris climate accord of 2015.

The World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, said that the global mean near-surface temperature for each year from 2024 to 2028 is expected to range between 1.1 and 1.9 degrees Celsius hotter than at the start of the industrial era.

It also estimated that there’s nearly a one-in-two chance — 47% — that the average global temperatures over that timeframe could top 1.5 C, an increase from just under a one-in-three chance projected for the 2023-2027 span.

“This forecast is affirmation that the world has entered a climate where years that are as hot as 2023 should no longer be a surprise,” Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, said in an email of the WMO forecast.

Waleed Abdalati, who heads an environmental sciences institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, said the WMO report was “sobering – but not surprising” and noted the prospect of changes like higher costs for farm products, higher insurance rates, and greater public health risks linked to high heat or scarcity of water.

“The implications of this warming range from drought, to flooding, to fires, to health issues, to climate migration, and more,” he wrote in an email. “While some individuals may escape direct consequences, we will all be affected.”

Guterres took particular aim at the carbon-spewing industry and appealed to media and technology companies to stop taking advertising from its biggest players, as has been done in some places with Big Tobacco.

He repeated concerns about subsidies paid out in many countries for fossil fuels, which help keep prices low for consumers.

“Climate change is the mother of all stealth taxes paid by everyday people and vulnerable countries and communities,” he said. “Meanwhile, the godfathers of climate chaos — the fossil fuel industry — rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies.”

Guterres said that global emissions of carbon dioxide must fall 9% each year to 2030 for the 1.5 C-degree target under the Paris climate accords to be kept alive.

But temperatures are “heading in the wrong direction,” he said: They rose 1 degree last year.

“We are playing Russian roulette with the planet. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” Guterres said, while adding: “The truth is, we have control of the wheel.”

Guterres called on advanced Group of 20 countries — which are holding a summit in Brazil next month and are responsible for about 80% of all emissions — to lead. The richest 1% of people on Earth emit as much as two-thirds of all humanity, he said.

“We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unlivable lands,” Guterres said.

He appealed to “global finance,” alluding to banks and international financial institutions, to help contribute money, saying “innovative sources of funds” are needed.

“It’s time to put an effective price on carbon and tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies,” Guterres said.

But all countries — and people — must join the fight, he said, including the developing world, such as by ending deforestation and meeting targets to double energy efficiency and triple renewables by 2030.

Some critics say Guterres, which such alarmist speeches, puts too much a focus on stirring emotions than focusing on science that lays out the actual threat.

But U.N. officials and nongovernmental groups acknowledge that the secretary-general has little power beyond the “bully pulpit” — his perch at the head of the world body — to stir people, governments and business to change.