A team of international scientists are planning a $1 billion project to drill 3.7 miles beneath the seafloor and into the Earth's mantle in an attempt to get some answers about the origins and evolution of life, according to CNN.

Cutting through the 3000 km-thick layer between the crust and the core of the Earth would reveal the first ever fresh samples from there for scientists to examine, the news source reported.

The idea for the mission was proposed by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program.

However, with the large sum of money needed to fund the mission aside, the hardest part might be finding a way to drill through the extremely hard rock with the drill pipes available, The Inquisitor noted.

One of the projects co-leaders, Damon Teagle, called it "the most challenging endeavor in the history of Earth science."

"It will be the equivalent of dangling a steel string the width of a human hair in the deep end of a swimming pool and inserting it into a thimble 1/10 mm wide," Teagle said.

Scientists will be rely on a Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel called Chikyu to get them to the mantle, which was first launched in 2002 and capable of carrying 10 km of drilling pipes. Chikyu set a world-record for the deepest hole in scientific ocean drilling history in September, reaching 2.2 km into the seafloor, according to the report. This time, the drill will have to go about three times deeper, according to Business Insider.

The project will be conducted from the middle of the ocean, where the Earth's crust is at its thinnest. Three possible locations in the Pacific Ocean have already been scouted out to drill from the ocean floor to inside the mantle. At these sites the drill will only have to get through four miles of hard rock, whereas on land, the Earth's crust can be up to about 30 miles thick.