In Brief:

June 7, 2000
Web posted at: 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT)

From staff reports

(CNN) -- Arianespace signed the biggest launch services contract in the history of Europe's space industry on Thursday. Nine missions, valued at more than 1 billion euros (US $953,800), will serve the International Space Station.

The commercial order, approved by the European Space Agency, covers Ariane 5 missions between 2003 and 2014. Launches will take place at Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The most powerful Arianespace rocket, the Ariane 5, will carry the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), a spacecraft designed to bring fuel, water, supplies and other cargo to the space station.

Weighing approximately 20 metric tons, the ATVs will be placed into a 300 km (186 mile) orbit and then maneuver to a rendezvous with the space station.

The Ariane 5 is the most powerful rocket of Arianespace, the commercial arm of the 13-nation ESA. It carried out its first commercial trip last December.

(CNN) -- The scientifically valuable gas Argon has been detected in comet Hale-Bopp. The unprecedented find of a noble gas in a comet could provide clues about the comet's thermal history and origins, astronomers said this week.

Scientists from Texas, Colorado, Maryland and France collaborated in the NASA-supported project. They obtained the data from instruments flown on a sub-orbital rocket mission in 1997, just as comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to the sun.

"The argon signals are weak, but unmistakable. We had previously suspected their presence, but were able to recently confirm the result," said team leader Alan Stern, a scientist with the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement.

Noble gases do not interact chemically with other elements and are easily lost from icy bodies like comets. Therefore their presence or absence offers a method to study the thermal history of comets, according to the Texas-based institute.

The abundance of argon in Hale-Bopp suggests it has always been quite cold and formed in the deep outer reaches of the solar system. Scientists had earlier suspected it originated in the somewhat warmer Jupiter zone.

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