SpaceX now has a buyer for a few of its first Mars missions.
Teodoro Valente, president of the Italian Area Company (identified by its Italian acronym ASI), announced today (Aug. 7) that the group has signed a deal to fly experiments on the primary industrial Mars flights of SpaceX’s large new Starship rocket.
“The payloads will embrace, amongst different issues, a plant development experiment, a meteorological monitoring station and a radiation sensor,” ASI officers mentioned in a statement today (in English; translation by Google). “The purpose is to gather scientific information in the course of the roughly six-month interplanetary flight section that Starship will undertake from Earth to Mars and subsequently to the Martian floor.”
Italy goes to Mars! @ASI_Spazio and @SpaceX have signed a first-of-its-kind settlement to hold Italian experiments on the primary Starship flights to Mars with prospects. The payloads will collect scientific information in the course of the missions. Italy continues to steer in house exploration! pic.twitter.com/AGFoX85KnHAugust 7, 2025
SpaceX President and Chief Working Officer Gwynne Shotwell celebrated the deal as properly.
“Get on board! We’re going to Mars! SpaceX is now providing Starship providers to the Purple Planet. We’re excited to work with the Italian Area Company on this first-of-its-kind settlement. Extra to return,” she wrote in an X post today.
SpaceX is creating Starship — the most important and strongest rocket ever constructed — with Mars particularly in thoughts. Firm founder and CEO Elon Musk thinks the absolutely reusable car is the breakthrough wanted to make human settlement of the Purple Planet possible in the end.
However there’s a number of work to do earlier than Starship is prepared for its first Purple Planet journey; in any case, the large, two-stage car has not even reached Earth orbit but.
Starship launched for the primary time in April 2023 and has carried out eight extra suborbital check flights since, all of them from SpaceX’s Starbase website in South Texas. Throughout the three most up-to-date liftoffs — which occurred in January, March and Might of this yr — SpaceX lost the vehicle’s upper stage earlier than it may make its deliberate splashdown within the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX is at present gearing up for Flight 10 of Starship; that mission ought to launch someday this month, Musk has mentioned.