The market may be on form again on Tuesday and charging 0.5% higher, but that's nothing compared to some of the gains being made in the mining sector today.

For example, the two ASX mining stocks listed below are smashing the market with very strong gains. Here's why they are on fire today:

This copper miner's shares are up 12% to 19.7 cents on Tuesday. This appears to have been driven by the release of an announcement from joint venture partner Helix Resources Ltd (ASX: HLX).

Helix revealed continued success of its induced polarisation geophysical survey techniques to rapidly delineate key zones that correlate with known copper anomalism at the Canbelego and Caballero joint venture projects in New South Wales.

Helix holds 70% and manages the joint venture, with Aeris Resources owning the balance.

The release notes that a gradient array induced polarisation survey has identified a highly prospective 1,200m conductive zone at the Canbelego Main Lode extending north of Canbelego and coincident with surface copper geochemical anomalism.

Helix's executive technical director, Kylie Prendergast, commented:

The new geophysical survey results show there are significant new copper targets in close proximity to known, high-grade copper mineralisation at the Canbelego deposit. This is generating a lot of excitement in the Helix team on our ability to expand our Canbelego Copper Mineral Resources with drilling scheduled to start in May.

This gold explorer's shares are up over 6% to 24.5 cents. This follows the release of further regional drilling results from the 5.38Moz Bankan Gold Project in Guinea.

This regional exploration campaign is aiming to discover additional commercial gold deposits and is currently focused on the Argo area, which lies 15-20km north of the NEB and BC deposits.

As you might have guessed from the share price reaction, the drilling results announced today were very promising.

The ASX mining stock's managing director, Andrew Pardey, commented:

We are delighted with the latest exploration results from Argo, which pleasingly includes both follow-up drill holes at promising targets and first-pass results from new areas. The Fouwagbe-Sinkoumba targets continue to show significant potential, with the first DD holes at Fouwagbe returning multiple high-grade intercepts, confirming mineralisation in previous RC holes extend at depth. The next phase of drilling here will focus on testing continuity along strike between the drilling lines completed to date.

The excellent initial results along strike to the north-east at Sanifolon South, which include some of the best intercepts so far from Argo, such as 12m @ 6.29g/t, further add to the potential of this Argo Central Trend.