We live on a planet where people still die of starvation, and yet we still waste so much food — it’s a problem, and not just for sustenance but the environment. You may not be aware of it, but a huge amount of that waste comes from the grocery stores and supermarkets we shop at every week. Part of it is just a category problem: Americans are used to seeing a wide and alluring variety of foods on shelves, and a lot of it, especially for produce and meats.

So what do the stores do? They overpurchase, “knowing that some food waste must be built into their bottom line,” says Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The end result of these problems is tons of food going uneaten before it spoils and perfectly good food thrown out. In 2022, grocery retailers in the United States generated about 5 million tons of surplus food, over a third of which went to landfills or was incinerated.

NASA now has a backup plan for space travel.

When Boeing Starliner launched at 10:52 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, so began the critical first chapter of the company’s Crew Flight Test.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams flew at 17,500 miles per hour northbound along the U.S. East Coast, towards Ireland, and over the Mediterranean Sea before entering orbit around Earth.

If Starliner aces the checks, docking with the International Space Station, reentry and landing in this next week, it will become the second U.S. human-rated spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts into orbit.

Watch Wednesday’s historic launch, in pictures.