Italy boards Starship: Italian experiments will fly to Mars with SpaceX

Italy goes to Mars aboard Elon Musk's Starship .

The Italian Space Agency has signed an unprecedented agreement with SpaceX to carry Italian scientific experiments on the first commercial missions to the Red Planet.

The announcement, made on August 7 by ASI President Teodoro Valente , marks a turning point in Italian space exploration: three Italian payloads—an experiment on plant growth, a meteorological station, and a cosmic radiation sensor—will collect crucial data during the six-month interplanetary journey and on the Martian surface.

"Italy continues to be at the forefront of space technology," Valente underlined, while Enterprise Minister Adolfo Urso , the authority responsible for aerospace policies, hailed the agreement as "strategic for the future of the country."

The experiments were not chosen at random: studying how plants grow in space means designing greenhouses for future colonies, monitoring weather and radiation means protecting astronauts who will one day walk on Mars.

With this agreement, Italy secures a front-row seat in the new space race led by private companies that – using Starship – aim to become the backbone of private interplanetary transport.