An unmanned Russian spacecraft carrying tons of supplies to the International Space Station has blasted off to the orbiting laboratory.
The Progress MS-13 cargo ship blasted off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russian space complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on December 6. It is set to dock with the space station on December 9.
It is also carrying a computer system for the German-Russian animal-observation program Icarus, according to Germany's DLR space center.
The computer system should correct previous malfunctioning of the Icarus program, designed to observe the migration patterns of animals tagged with transmitter devices.
The program is intended for scientists to figure out how to improve wildlife conservation efforts.
Also amid the cargo is a new belt for a treadmill to maintain the crew's "physical fitness under the zero-gravity conditions," Russian space agency Roskosmos said in a statement.
