It will deliver food and materials for scientific experiments to the station.

The American company SpaceX launched on Wednesday the Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Dragon spacecraft, which will deliver the cargo to the crew of the International space station (ISS). The launch of the carrier took place from the US air force base at Cape Canaveral (Florida) at 13:16 local time (21:16 GMT). The launch is broadcast on the website of the National Aeronautics and space administration (NASA).

Dragon will deliver to the space station more than 2.5 tons of cargo, including food and materials for a series of scientific experiments. This is the 16th mission to send supplies and equipment to the ISS, carried out with the help of this space truck. Dragon docking with the ISS is expected to be made on Saturday.

The ship will also deliver liquid methane and modules for refueling operations to the station. With their help, an experiment will be conducted for the first time to pump this type of fuel into the tank of the module at an altitude of about 400 km from the Ground. This process will involve the Dextre manipulator, designed by

Canadian specialists, installed on the outer surface of the ISS in March 2008.

Among the scientific instruments that dragon carries on the ISS are devices designed to study phenomena in The earth’s atmosphere, as well as the GEDI laser rangefinder designed to monitor the forest cover of the Earth. The latter will be installed on the ISS surface, allowing scientists to obtain high-precision data on the vertical structure of forests, flora and fauna for the first time, as well as to study the carbon-nitrogen cycle on the Earth in more detail.

Currently on the ISS work astronauts Roscosmos Sergey Prokopiev, and Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronauts Serena Aunon and Ann McClain, as well as astronauts Alexander Gerst (European space Agency) and David Saint-Jacques (Canadian space Agency)