Closer To The Goal
One of the Russian team’s boreholes went deeper than the Bertha Rogers hole on June 6, 1979. The SG-3 was chosen as the name for the borehole. By 1983, the SG-3 borehole had gone down to a depth of nearly 30,000 feet. The diameter of the opening was 9 inches. As a result, the Russian team was only 10,000 feet away from their target minimum. They put the drills on hold for a year so that various scientists could come and inspect the site.
Closer To The Goal
Started Again
A year later, when the Russian team resumed drilling, they encountered an unforeseen technical issue that caused them to stop working in borehole SG-3. The Russian team was unfazed and decided to drill another borehole. The depth of this borehole was over 7,000 meters (nearly 23,000 feet). The Russian group’s new borehole finally succeeded in 1989. A total depth of 40,230 feet was reached by the drill bit. That’s a good 7.5 miles below the surface of the Earth. This boosted morale and gave the group hope that they would indeed reach 44,000 feet in 1990.
Started Again
