Time tunnel: why an Australian expedition is drilling through 2.6km of Antarctic ice

Two snow groomers had set off on the 23 December, clearing a path across untraversed ice and snow for five tractors dragging sleds of tents, fuel, supplies, accommodation blocks, fridges and drilling gear.

What was the reaction when the team arrived?

Already, the team have been out using hand-coring tools to extract four short and shallow ice cores to examine the chemistry of the ice.

The idea to hunt for ice at least a million years old was first raised a decade ago, and the Million Year Ice project has been in the planning for six years.

For the next four or five years, a special drill designed at the AAD will slice through the ice pulling up 3-metre cores at a time until the drill hits bedrock, almost 3km down.

The oldest ice core ever drilled came from Dome Concordia, about 35km from the Australian site, with ice 800,000 years old.

From the air samples, scientists will be able to see the composition of the atmosphere and the temperatures at the time the snow was falling. Impurities like dust and salt in the ice can reveal how stormy conditions were, and elements like krypton, xenon and neon can help reveal ocean temperatures.

But the journey to the site has been epic and pioneering in itself, says Pedro. The last time an Australian team went this far inland was 1962, but they had air support.