SpaceX now has a customer for some of its first Mars missions.

Teodoro Valente, president of the Italian Space Agency (known by its Italian acronym ASI), announced today (Aug. 7) that the organization has signed a deal to fly experiments on the first commercial Mars flights of SpaceX's giant new Starship rocket.

"The payloads will include, among other things, a plant growth experiment, a meteorological monitoring station and a radiation sensor," ASI officials said in a statement today (in English; translation by Google). "The goal is to collect scientific data during the approximately six-month interplanetary flight phase that Starship will undertake from Earth to Mars and subsequently to the Martian surface."