The Dragon cargo spacecraft liftoff - Earth.com

Today’s Image of the Day from NASA shows SpaceX’s Dragon as it lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday, May 4.

The reusable cargo spacecraft was headed for the International Space Station carrying more than 5,500 pounds of research equipment that will be used in dozens of important studies.

One such instrument onboard the Dragon was the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3), which will track changes in the Earth’s atmosphere in unprecedented detail and map the amount of carbon dioxide over any region in the world.

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA

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