In 1958, the United States went ahead in the race and launched Project Mohole. Located near Guadalupe in Mexico, the operation involved a team of engineers drilling the Pacific Ocean floor, but eight years after it started its funding got cut off and the project was abandoned. In the end, Americans never reached the centre, but the Soviets also tried. In 1970, a team of researchers started drilling into the earth in the Pechengsky district, a sparsely populated region of Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Their goal was to try and get as close as possible to the centre.
