U.S. space firm SpaceX on Saturday launched supplies to the International Space Station, including an experiment from a Chinese university that will test the effects of space environments on DNA.

美国太空探索技术公司周六向国际空间站运送补给物资，其中包括中国某大学的一项测试太空环境对DNA影响的实验。

The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft lifted off on the company's Falcon 9 rocket at 5:07 p.m. EDT (2107 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

About 10 minutes later, the rocket's first stage achieved a successful landing at SpaceX's Landing Zone 1, just south of the launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

On this trip, the Dragon will deliver almost 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of supplies, including solar panels, tools for Earth-observation and equipment to study neutron stars.

Among the cargo is a 3.5-kilogram device from the Beijing Institute of Technology that sought to answer questions like "Does the space radiation and microgravity cause mutations among antibody-encoding genes and how does it happen?"

There is a U.S. law in place, known as the Wolf amendment, that bans cooperation between the U.S. space agency NASA and Chinese government entities, but this deal is purely commercial and therefore considered legal.