Scientists will set out this week to drill a hole into the Indian Ocean floor to try to get below the Earth's crust for the first time. They want to reach the MOHO (the boundary between the crust and the mantle).
They want to sample rock from the planet's mantle - its deep interior.
In the process, the researchers hope to check their assumptions about the materials from which the crust itself is made.
It will probably take several years to drop the full 5 to 5.5km, says co-team leader, Prof Chris MacLeod.
"The science is approved and we have funding for this initial two-month investigation. But we will need to come back and we may not complete the task until the 2020s."
There have been several attempts to drill into the mantle, but none has yet succeeded.
They will be drilling into the Indian Ocean MOR
The textbook explanation is that the Moho draws the line between the crust and the mantle: a demarcation between familiar igneous surface rocks - such as granites, basalts and gabbros - and those of the interior peridotites.
But Prof MacLeod suspects the discontinuity could also describe in places the depth to which water has managed to penetrate into the peridotites to produce a different type of rock known as serpentinite.
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