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Boeing's Starliner Prepares To Dock At ISS; Ex-Neighbor Of Justice Alito Contradicts Timing Of Event That Led To Raising Inverted Flag; 30-Plus Million Under Heat Alerts Out West. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired June 06, 2024 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[13:30:43]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Any second now, Boeing's Starliner will be docking at the International Space Station. It has been moving at a rapid five centimeters per second.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Rapid five centimeters per second. It should be docking within the next 30 seconds, less than 30 seconds.
It's taking place nearly 15 hours after its successful launch from Cape Canaveral yesterday. And after NASA discovered two additional helium leaks during the voyage late last night.
With us, as we await this milestone, CNN space and defense correspondent, Kristin Fisher, and retired NASA astronaut, Leroy Chiao.
Kristin, first talk to us about what's actually happening right now, seconds away from this dock.
KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE & DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they've actually extended it to just about a few minutes because they want to make sure the light is right.
So what you have is Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, that's that capsule that the astronauts that we watched launched yesterday have been inside for the last 24 hours or so.
And what it is doing, it is -- it is slowly approaching the International Space Station and they're going to dock. But this is the first time they have ever done that with a crew on board.
And of course, you have astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. And so what they want to do is take it very slowly and they want to wait until there's actual sunlight on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
Right now, they're in a period of darkness, nighttime in space. So they're waiting just a few more minutes until they get that sunlight. They're now on the final approach.
And they've been troubleshooting these pesky RCS thrusters, as they're called, the things that kind of propel the spacecraft, move through those last-minute final adjustments. But they think they've walked -- they've worked through those issues.
And we're now just minutes away. Nine meters away, as we'll.
KEILAR: Five centimeters to go. It's going to still be a second here.
I also prefer driving during the day to driving at night.
(LAUGHTER)
KEILAR: So that makes complete sense to me.
We're watching every little thing with this, right? So we're watching those thrusters. This was a slight delay compared to what it was supposed to dock. But also these little helium leaks. What's going on here?
FISHER: Yes. So we knew there was a helium leak before launch. NASA and Boeing was aware of it and they said, hey, you know what we think it is within our parameters that it's still safe to fly.
So we knew there was going to be one. But once the spacecraft got into orbit, they found two more. Last night, before NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, went to sleep, they made them do all these things to kind of shut down some of these thrusters to stop the leak.
And they troubleshooted it overnight and decided that they we're OK and go for this docking today.
So it could have been more serious but turned out not to be. And so now they're just troubleshooting these final things. It's a first test flight. These things do happen.
SANCHEZ: Yes.
FISHER: But --
(CROSSTALK)
SANCHEZ: -- hear it's not serious, a serious issue.
We just got word from the feed. We're now roughly about a minute, 30 seconds from docking.
Leroy, as we're watching this unfold, take us inside the minds of these astronauts about to accomplish something historic.
LEROY CHIAO, RETIRED NASA ASTRONAUT: Oh, absolutely. Butch and Sandi are consummate professionals. They're very laser focused on the task at hand. Docking is one of those critical maneuvers. And so they're watching their instruments there.
They've got their check -- checklist out and they are just monitoring the situations, monitoring the automatic situation, poised to take manual control if necessary. And again, they're delayed just a little bit just to wait for optimal lighting conditions. But not a big deal.
KEILAR: Tell us what we're looking at here. Are you able to see the picture as we're looking at the capsule moving towards the space station?
CHIAO: Yes. So I have an image of the capsule as it's approaching. So as you pointed out, very slowly, approaching very slowly. Not at all like the movies. You don't come whizzing in and dock.
(LAUGHTER)
CHIAO: It takes -- it takes a bit of time. You've got to be -- got to be slow and deliberate.
Anyway, by the, by the way, I mean, I'm very familiar with this process. On my mission in the Russian Soyuz capsule, we had an emergency docking and we had to execute a manual night docking. So we didn't wait for the lighting conditions.
(CROSSTALK)
CHIAO: But we --
KEILAR: We're looking, I think it docked. Is this -- is this a success?
[13:35:00]
CHIAO: Yes. It's looking like it, right? Yes?
(CROSSTALK)
CHIAO: I believe so.
(CROSSTALK)
CHIAO: -- a huge deal.
FISHER: It's so close. It's 0.5 meters away. I mean, it should be docking --
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SANCHEZ: Let's go ahead and listen into the NASA feed right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SILENCE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: It's tough to hear.
KEILAR: Yes -- SANCHEZ: But we're waiting with bated breath for confirmation that they've docked. It was -- it was slow and it was tedious, but it appears to have been successful.
So, Leroy, put this docking into context for us, what it means for the bigger picture of space travel.
CHIAO: Well, what it means is that, if they've successfully docked, and it seems like they have, awaiting that confirmation, as you said, but that means that we now have a second path to launching NASA astronauts to and from the ISS.
Of course, SpaceX has been doing it for nearly three years. We -- one, NASA likes redundancy. Astronauts like redundancy. All engineers do. And so this would mean we have a second path without having to go back to relying on the Russians and their Soyuz vehicle.
So this is a historic moment. Butch and Suni, I'm sure they're going through their procedures, but they're also thrilled to be attached to the ISS.
KEILAR: Yes. Not the least, because that's not a giant capsule they're in, right? I'm sure they're looking forward to stretching their legs.
CHIAO: Oh, yes, yes. No, it's not a -- not a big capsule by any means. The space shuttle, by comparison, was a palace, right? I mean, we could have seven astronauts with our seats deployed and still be very much in more of a business-class-type of seating arrangement.
But nonetheless, these vehicles are very capable and they do their job well. And hopefully, everything else will continue to go relatively smoothly for this flight test.
SANCHEZ: Absolutely.
Kristin, what happens next?
FISHER: Well, what happens next is these astronauts are going to spend about eight days up at the International Space Station. But in addition to them bringing themselves and this new spacecraft, they've also brought a new replacement pump to fix the machine that recycles -- get this -- the astronaut urine and turns it into drinking water.
KEILAR: Oh, delicious.
FISHER: It's been broken for a few days now.
(LAUGHTER)
FISHER: So as you can imagine, there have quite literally been bags of urine piling up at the International Space Station.
(CROSSTALK)
FISHER: It's secured but limited space. And so right now, inside that Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is a
replacement pump for that urine recycling system. A critical piece of infrastructure that's needed onboard the ISS.
SANCHEZ: Unquestionably so. A critical mission.
KEILAR: My gosh.
(CROSSTALK)
KEILAR: I'm sure the crew there was excited to see Suni and Butch anyways, but they're going to get like a hero's welcome.
(LAUGHTER)
KEILAR: Kristin, Leroy, thank you so much to both of you. A huge day.
And --
SANCHEZ: And it was great to witness. Even though the audio wasn't great, it was great to watch that happen.
KEILAR: Yes, very slow and perfect.
SANCHEZ: Meticulous.
KEILAR: Justice Samuel Alito's former neighbor is now disputing his account of the clash that led to the hoisting of that upside-down flag outside of his house. Hear what she told CNN.
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[13:42:49]
KEILAR: Now to the other side of the story in the inverted flag controversy enveloping Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Alito's former neighbor is sharing what she says led to the hoisting of the upside-down U.S. flag outside his Virginia home back in 2021. And she contradicts his timeline of events.
Alito told Congress in a letter that his wife flew the inverted flag in response to an argument with an anti-Trump neighbor who called his wife an expletive.
Here's the neighbor.
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EMILY BADEN, FORMER JUSTICE ALITO NEIGHBOR WHO HAD DISPUTE WITH HIS WIFE: The interaction that happened on February 15th is the one that they're using as an excuse for why they flew the flag.
And I really want to hammer home the fact that that happened on February 15th, and their flag went up two or three weeks before that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now, the upside-down flag has become a symbol for those who believed the 2020 election was stolen.
We have CNN Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biskupic, here.
What more to this former neighbor of the Alito say, Joan?
JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Yes, they both have definite accounts of what happened.
And the reason it's relevant, this choice is to 2021, but it's relevant because of the cases the justices are deciding right now that have to do what January 6th. And former President Donald Trump's challenge to the election results that ultimately put Joe Biden in the White House.
Now, she focuses a lot on February 15th, and she's going to talk in this next bit of sound we're going to use from Erin's interview about that.
And then I'll tell you kind of how he might, in some way in his letter, have countered that.
Let's hear what she told Erin.
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BADEN: I -- at best, he's mistaken but, at worst, he's just outright lying.
And there was a neighbor, who even -- who even witnessed this and witnessed me using that unfortunate term. And what else I said in that interaction is so important. And I hope it's not getting forgotten in the discourse around the word.
In that interaction, she approached us, started screaming at us, used all of our full names, which, to me, felt like a threat because you're a stranger. We don't know you. You don't know us. How do you know our full names?
[13:45:01]
And I just -- I started yelling, how dare you, because they both were there at the same time.
So I said, how dare you. You're on the highest court in the land. You represent the Supreme Court of the United States. You're behaving this way. You're yelling at a neighbor. You're harassing us. How dare you. Shame on you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BISKUPIC: OK. So this is interesting. What she's doing is she's talking about this event on February 15, 2021. And CNN has obtained the police report that talks about this particular event. But that police report also talks about kind of an ongoing set of issues. And Justice Alito's letter to Congress explaining why the flag wasn't taken down and blaming the situation on his wife, Martha-Ann, he doesn't use dates. He talks about something that went on.
And through "The Washington Post" reporting, we know that this situation was building. Bottom line, there is some ambiguity over what incidents happened when, beyond the February 15th one.
KEILAR: The flag, by the way, was up in late January?
BISKUPIC: Exactly. And that's when --
(CROSSTALK)
BISKUPIC: -- when Martha-Ann Alito approached the "Washington Post" reporter who had gone out to the house on January 20th. She -- you know, she talked about, look what they're doing to me.
And so that's when we know it was up. In "The New York Times" story, it was accompanied by a picture from January 17th. So we knew that -- we know it was January that it was up. It had come down by the 20th, by the way.
But one thing I want to say in all this, the bottom line is that Sam Alito has blamed this situation on his wife, Martha-Ann. That's why we're even talking about it.
And he is not suggested why he, himself, a justice of the Supreme Court, couldn't have just taken the darned flag down yourself.
KEILAR: Yes.
BISKUPIC: So --
KEILAR: You live there, too, right? He lives there, too.
But he is not planning to recuse himself. He's sort of put out there to Congress his rationale for that. Explain the potential impact.
BISKUPIC: OK. So what he said is that no reasonable observer could think that he has a conflict of interest here. But what it means is he has now sat on two really important cases that are part of the fallout from January 6th. And we're going to get those rulings by the end of the term.
One involves whether former President Trump should be immune from election subversion for the events of -- at the end of 2020 and in 2021.
And the other one involves whether defendants on January 6th, who stormed the capital, should be criminally charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. And that involves Donald Trump, too.
KEILAR: All right. We'll be looking -- BISKUPIC: Yes.
KEILAR: This is not the end of this. That is -- that is very clear.
Joan Biskupic, thank you so much. We appreciate it.
Right now, we're looking at peak intensity. That searing heat dome delivering the hottest day of the year for millions in the U.S.
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[13:52:21]
SANCHEZ: That brutal heat dome that's parked out west is about to smother cities to new extremes. Today is going to be the hottest day of an early season heatwave. And nearly two dozen record highs are expected in places like Vegas and Phoenix.
CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers is in the Weather Center for us.
Chad, how soon before this extreme heat finally passes?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, for Sacramento tomorrow. For Phoenix and Vegas, I don't see it. Maybe Tuesday of next week. It's still going to be hot.
Now, Boris put this into perspective. This summer, it will be hotter than this. But this is an early season heat dome now giving us the middle-of-July temperatures in June.
My dog still has some of his winter coat. Sometimes it's laying all over the floor in the morning.
But so many people are not ready for this type of heat this early in the season. And, yes, we have warnings out for, all the way really from about almost New Mexico, all the way up even in northern California.
Look at Del Rio, Texas, tying a new record at 107 yesterday. And Vacaville breaking a record as well. There'll be 100 new record highs out there in the west by the end of the weekend.
And we had this stat on June 4th because that was the year, 25 years ago, June 4th. Las Vegas has not broken a low temperature record in now 25 years. June 4, 1999, was the last time Las Vegas broke a record low. And we're nowhere near it now.
And so, yes, temperatures 15, almost 20 degrees above normal all the way from Denver through Salt Lake. And it's going to be hot now for the next couple of days.
There will be some showers off to the east, but this heat dome is right in place.
We talk about heat dome all time. This is just like taking your car, rolling up the windows and parking it in the sunshine. When you get a high-pressure dome, like we have right now, the wind doesn't blow. So when it bakes the sun -- and there's no clouds.
When the sun goes down onto the ground, it warms the ground and, all of a sudden, it stays warm because nothing's there to blow it away. And this isn't going to blow away until at least Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. And then of course, it'll be back later in the season for sure -- Boris?
SANCHEZ: That hot-car analogy a painful one, but I'm sure --
MYERS: Yes.
SANCHEZ: -- it rings true for folks in those cities.
Chad Myers, thanks so much for the forecast. Appreciate it.
Brianna?
KEILAR: This week on "HOME FRONT," today marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France. And in Normandy, world leaders and dignitaries gathered for a commemoration there at the beach.
And they were joined by some Hollywood heavyweights, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. The two, of course, dramatized the events of that day in the film, "Saving Private Ryan."
[13:55:08]
And in an exclusive interview with our Christiane Amanpour, Hanks spoke about the making of that film.
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TOM HANKS, ACTOR: We did not have this smell of cordite or burning flesh or, you know, blood on the sand. But we did have some version of that - how -- whatever you can get out of a motion picture.
If you've ever wondered what it was like, that's as close as somebody in Davenport, Iowa, or Oakland, California, or Minneapolis, Minnesota, was going to get to that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Hanks told Christiane that Spielberg expected the D-Day shoot to last three weeks, and it did. He said that he and the director both had hoped that it would be a document that accurately reflected the tenor of that day.
Stay with CNN. We'll be right back.
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