Request GET method to get image works in local, but not testing / production environment, what do I have to consider in the live environments?

I am using an API to retrieve the image source url and sending a request.get(...) method to retrieve the image and send it over to S3 upload. On the local environment, it works perfectly fine, but on the live environment, it is returning an image with 0 bytes when it is uploaded to S3.

I have tried investigating if it was an issue with the S3 post method CORS configuration, but this did not have any changes.

Uploading an image from local and live from a generic google images link, same issue where local is fine, but live environment file sizes are 0 bytes.

Tried using the express cors middleware for the specific route, no changes.

function sendUrlImageToS3 (uri, filename) {
  return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
    const subFolder = 'uploads/';
    const s3Auth = new aws.S3({ params: {
      Bucket: `BUCKET_NAME`,
      Key: `RANDOM_KEY_STRING`
    }})
    // Send a GET request to the uri provided, initiate retrieval of the response data object
    // Send that as a body of the s3.upload and configure as public read
    // Once confirmed, return promise as resolved or rejected
    request.get(uri)
      .on('response', (res) => {
        if (res.statusCode === 200) {
          s3Auth.upload({ Body: res, ACL: "public-read", CacheControl: '5184000'}, (err, data) => {
            if (err) {
              reject({ success: false, error: err, data: null });
            }
            resolve({ success: true, error: false, data });
          })
        }
      })
  });
// This is called like this...
sendUrlImageToS3(IMAGE_URL_STRING, RANDOM_STRING_NAME);

In the local environment, it sends the image to S3 bucket which is the same as the testing environment. When local environment loads it, I would expect it to be the same with the testing environment given that the bucket is the same. However, the upload from testing environment is a 0byte object.
I believe I have safely ruled out that the upload to S3 is not the issue, but rather the request.get(...) result. I logged out the result from the request in local and live and the rawHeader is (***'d the spot that was different between live and local):
// rawHeaders: 
    // [ 'Content-Type',
    //   'image/jpeg',
    //   'Cache-Control',
    //   'public,max-age=315360001',
    //   'X-Imgix-Content-DPR',
    //   '1',
    //   'X-Content-Type-Options',
    //   'nosniff',
    //   'Last-Modified',
    //   'Thu, 20 Jun 2019 2:50:45 GMT',
    //   'X-Imgix-Render-ID',
    //   '000000006D424E84',
    //   'Server',
    //   'imgix-fe',
    //   'Access-Control-Allow-Methods',
    //   'GET',
    //   'Access-Control-Allow-Origin',
    //   '*',
    //   'Content-Length',
    //   '71879',
    //   'Accept-Ranges',
    //   'bytes',
    //   'Date',
    //   'Thu, 20 Jun 2019 02:50:45 GMT',
    //   'Via',
    //   '1.1 varnish',
    //   'Age',
    //   '0',
    //   'Connection',
    //   'close',
    //   'X-Served-By',
    //   'cache-dca17761-DCA',
    //   'X-Cache',
    //   'MISS',
    //   'X-Cache-Hits',
    //   '0', <<< ***THIS ONE HERE IS 0, BUT IN LOCAL ENVIRONMENT SHOWS A BYTE SIZE SUCH AS '4015'
    //   'X-Timer',
    //   'S1560999046.569615,VS0,VE408' ],