(CNN) -- NASA and Thiokol Propulsion of Brigham City, Utah, have completed negotiations for a contract worth up to $1.73 billion for 73 space shuttle reusable solid rocket motors.

The motors -- two are used per flight -- are the primary component of the shuttle solid rocket boosters, providing 6.6 million pounds of thrust or 71.4 percent of what the shuttle needs for liftoff.

The contract calls for manufacture and delivery of the new motor components to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to begin this fall and continue through September 2004. Thiokol also will conduct post-flight review of the last motors flown, carrying the contract through 2005. In addition to 35 sets of flight motors, the contract also includes three motors that will be used in ground testing to ensure quality and prove new materials, manufacturing techniques and hardware suppliers.

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Egyptian desert chosen for 'life on Mars' tests

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- The European Space Agency hopes to conduct experiments in Egypt's Western Desert in order to test equipment to be used eventually to search for life on Mars, Agence France-Presse reported Sunday.

The Egyptian desert was chosen as the testing site for new radar technology that will be used to hunt for evidence of life on the red planet when the space agency's Mars Express probe is launched in June 2003, Essam Heggy, a member of the radar-imaging team from the Bordeaux astronomical observatory in southern France, was quoted as saying.

The space probe will orbit Mars to obtain images from beneath the planet's surface with radar waves, in hopes of finding material such as fossils and calcified forests. It will also release the British space probe Beagle 2.

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