As the Aral Sea has been drained by irrigation and dried up, the mass loss on the surface has caused Earth’s upper mantle to rise up, lifting the emptied sea bed an average of 7 millimetres per year ...

deep beneath our feet has yielded precious few details over the past few decades. We all grew up learning that we live on the Earth’s crust, which is just a thin layer above the mantle.

Making the mission a milestone for both China and space exploration as a whole ... And it's a whopping 8 km deep — for comparison, the deepest natural point on Earth, the Challenger Deep ...