CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Boeing launched astronauts for the first time Wednesday, belatedly joining SpaceX as a second taxi service for NASA.

A pair of NASA test pilots blasted off aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the International Space Station, the first to fly the new spacecraft.

The trip by Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was expected to take 25 hours, with an arrival Thursday. They will spend just over a week at the orbiting lab before climbing back into Starliner for a remote desert touchdown in the western U.S. on June 14.

“Let’s get going!” Wilmore called out a few minutes before liftoff.

Half an hour later, he and Williams were safely in orbit and giving chase to the space station. Back at Cape Canaveral, the relieved launch controllers stood and applauded. After all the trouble leading up to Wednesday’s launch, including two scrapped countdowns, everything went smoothly before and during liftoff, prompting congratulations from SpaceX’s Elon Musk and others.

“Today it all lined up,” said Boeing program manager Mark Nappi.

Years late because of spacecraft flaws, Starliner’s crew debut comes as the company struggles with unrelated safety issues on its airplane side.

Wilmore and Williams — retired Navy captains and former space station residents — stressed repeatedly before the launch that they had full confidence in Boeing’s ability to get it right with this test flight. Crippled by bad software, Starliner’s initial test flight in 2019 without a crew had to be repeated before NASA would let its astronauts strap in. The 2022 do-over went much better, but parachute problems later cropped up and flammable tape had to be removed from the capsule.

Wednesday’s launch was the third attempt with astronauts since early May, coming after a pair of rocket-related problems, most recently last weekend. A small helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system also caused delays, but remained extremely low and manageable.

“It’s just a tough endeavor to get to flight and huge kudos to the entire team for getting there,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.

Boeing was hired alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX a decade ago to ferry NASA’s astronauts to and from the space station. The space agency wanted two competing U.S. companies for the job in the wake of the space shuttles’ retirement, paying $4.2 billion to Boeing and just over half that to SpaceX, which refashioned the capsule it was using to deliver station supplies.

SpaceX launched astronauts into orbit in 2020, becoming the first private business to achieve what only three countries — Russia, the U.S. and China — had mastered. It has taken nine crews to the space station for NASA and three private groups for a Houston company that charters flights.

The liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was the 100th of an Atlas V for rocket maker United Launch Alliance. It was the first ride for astronauts on an Atlas rocket since John Glenn’s Mercury era more than 60 years ago; the rocket usually launches satellites and other spacecraft.

Despite the Atlas V’s perfect record, the human presence cranked up the tension for the scores of NASA and Boeing employees gathered at Cape Canaveral and Mission Control in Houston.

Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon are designed to be fully autonomous and reusable. Wilmore and Williams occasionally will take manual control of Starliner on their way to the space station, to check out its systems. The only snag early in the flight involved the capsule’s cooling system. More water was used than expected before the radiators took over in orbit. The tank will be refilled before the ride home.

If the mission goes well, NASA will alternate between SpaceX and Boeing for taxi flights, beginning next year. The backup pilot for this test flight, Mike Fincke, will strap in for Starliner’s next trip.

“This is exciting. We built up to this moment for years and years, and it finally happened,” Fincke said from neighboring Kennedy Space Center. “I feel like the whole planet was cheering for them.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The pink house where Muhammad Ali grew up dreaming of boxing fame — and where hundreds of fans gathered for an emotional send-off as his funeral procession passed by decades later — is up for sale.

The two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Louisville was converted into a museum that offered a glimpse into the formative years of the boxing champion and humanitarian known worldwide as The Greatest. The house went on the market Tuesday along with two neighboring homes — one was turned into a welcome center-gift shop and the other was meant to become a short-term rental.

The owners are asking $1.5 million for the three properties. Finding a buyer willing to maintain Ali’s childhood home as a museum would be “the best possible result,” co-owner George Bochetto said.

“This is a part of Americana,” said Bochetto, a Philadelphia attorney and former Pennsylvania state boxing commissioner. “This is part of our history. And it needs to be treated and respected as such.”

The museum opened for tours shortly before Ali’s death in 2016. Bochetto and his business partner at the time renovated the frame house to how it looked when Ali — known then as Cassius Clay — lived there with his parents and younger brother.

“You walk into this house … you’re going back to 1955, and you’re going to be in the middle of the Clay family home,” Bochetto told The Associated Press during a 2016 interview.

Using old photos, the developers replicated the home’s furnishings, appliances, artwork and even its pink exterior from Ali’s days living there. The museum featured videos focused on the story of Ali’s upbringing, not his storied boxing career.

“To me, that’s the bigger story and the more important story,” Bochetto said in an interview last week.

Ali got his start in boxing after his bicycle was stolen. Wanting to report the crime, the 12-year-old Ali was introduced to Joe Martin, a police officer who doubled as a boxing coach at a local gym. Ali told Martin he wanted to whip the culprit. The thief was never found, nor was the bike, but Ali became a regular in Martin’s gym.

Ali lived in the home when he left for the 1960 Olympics. He returned as a gold medal winner, launching a career that made him one of the world’s most recognizable figures as a three-time heavyweight boxing champion and globetrotting humanitarian.

The home became a worldwide focal point on the day of Ali’s burial, when hundreds of people lined the street in front of the house as his hearse and funeral procession slowly passed by.

Despite its high-profile debut, the museum ran into financial troubles and closed less than two years after opening. The museum is situated in a western Louisville neighborhood several miles from downtown, where the Muhammad Ali Center preserves his humanitarian and boxing legacies.

As efforts to reopen the childhood museum languished, offers to move the 1,200-square-foot (111-square-meter) house to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and even Saudi Arabia were turned down, Bochetto said.

“I wouldn’t do that because it’s an important piece of Louisville history, Kentucky history and I think it needs to stay right where it is,” he said.

Las Vegas real estate investor Jared Weiss bought the Ali childhood house — then rundown and vacant — in 2012 for $70,000 with plans to restore it. Three years later, Weiss formed a partnership with Bochetto, who acquired a half interest in the project. Both were avid fans of Ali, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the restoration project. They also purchased the two neighboring homes, financed a documentary, subsidized museum operations and incurred expenses for all three properties. Weiss has since died and his wife is the project’s co-owner, Bochetto said.

Now, Bochetto said he’s hoping they’ll find a buyer with the “marketing and operational know-how” to make the museum a success.

“I want to make sure that it continues in that fashion and never goes back to where it’s abandoned or dilapidated,” he said. “That should never have happened.”

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday to bank and tax fraud in a sports betting case where he will admit to stealing nearly $17 million from the Japanese baseball player.

Tuesday’s change-of-plea hearing for Ippei Mizuhara in federal court in Santa Ana, California, comes as the gambling scandal has shocked baseball fans from Japan to the U.S. and ratcheted up a media frenzy that’s ever-present around Ohtani. It occurs as the Dodgers begin a three-game series in Pittsburgh.

The duo’s personal and professional relationship allowed Mizuhara to exploit his access to the two-way player. Prosecutors say he plundered millions from Ohtani’s account for years, at times impersonating him to bankers, to pay off sports gambling debts.

Mizuhara’s winning bets totaled over $142 million, which he deposited in his own bank account and not Ohtani’s. His losing bets were around $183 million, a net loss of nearly $41 million. He did not wager on baseball.

Authorities say there was no evidence Ohtani was involved in or aware of Mizuhara’s gambling, and the player cooperated with investigators.

MLB rules prohibit players and team employees from wagering on baseball, even legally. MLB also bans betting on other sports with illegal or offshore bookmakers.

Mizuhara signed a plea agreement that detailed the allegations on May 5, and federal prosecutors announced it several days later.

Mizuhara is expected to plead guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return. The bank fraud charge carries a maximum of 30 years in federal prison, and the false tax return charge carries a sentence of up to three years in federal prison.

Sentencing and restitution proceedings have not yet been scheduled.