Commissioned 1968
Decommissioned 1980

An outgrowth of preliminary drilling made during Project Mohole, the Deep Sea Drilling Project began on August 11, 1968, with the commissioning of the research ship Glomar Challenger. Project Mohole had been proposed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1957 to drill all the way through the outer crust of the earth. During the project a hole was drilled thousands of feet below the surface of the water, but the technology was not sufficiently advanced to achieve the project’s goals. Its failure led to the building of the Glomar Challenge; a ship constructed especially for underwater drilling.

Designed for deep drilling

Glomar Challenger was designed by a California offshore oil-drilling company, Global Marine, Inc. The first part of the ship’s name is an acronym for that company; the second part was taken from H.M.S. Challenger (see entry), the...