LOS ANGELES Deep Space 1’s xenon ion rocket is well into a 13-day continuous firing set to end Dec. 7, passing the 200-hr. benchmark required to declare the technology validation mission a success and leaving engineers pleased with the initial data.

Paris France and the U.S. are nearing agreement on a long-term joint effort to explore the surface, subsurface and atmosphere of Mars and bring back samples of rocks for detailed analysis on Earth, according to French officials. The program would follow on from NASA’s Mars 1998 flights planned for later this year (AW&ST Nov. 30, p. 60) and Mars 2001, for which France is to provide a gamma ray spectrometer germanium detector.

PARIS The French government and industry executives are increasingly worried by a looming British Aerospace/DaimlerChrysler Aerospace merger agreement that excludes Aerospatiale. They believe such a bilateral initiative would further complicate a cross-border plan to form the European Aerospace and Defense Co. (EADC) set to combine all major European players.