| abstract | - The Mohorovičić discontinuity is on average 7 km below the ocean floor and 30 to 50 km beneath typical continents. It is deepest beneath the Tibetan Plateau, where it is approximately 75 km below the surface.[citation needed] During the late 1950s and early 1960s, a proposal was taken up in the executive committee of the National Science Foundation to drill a hole through the ocean floor to reach this boundary. However the operation, named Project Mohole, never received sufficient support and was mismanaged; it was canceled by the United States Congress in 1967. Simultaneous efforts were made by the Soviet Union at the Kola Institute, which reached a depth of 12,260 meters (40,226 feet) over 15 years, the world's deepest hole to date, before that attempt was also abandoned. Reaching the discontinuity remains an important scientific objective. A more recent proposal considers a self-descending tungsten capsule heated by radiogenic heat to explore Earth’s interior near the Moho discontinuity and in the upper mantle. The Japanese project Chikyu Hakken ("Earth Discovery") also aims to explore this general area.
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