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In the journey of human scientific and technological exploration, every breakthrough is like a star breaking through the night sky, illuminating the way forward for mankind.

"Going up to the sky, going into the earth, going into the sea and ascending to the throne" are the four great feats of mankind's understanding and challenge of nature.

Over the years, human space probes have left footprints in space, deep-sea submersibles have broken through the maximum depth of the ocean floor, and polar scientific research results have been updated repeatedly... However, the ultra-deep scientific drilling project, which serves as mankind's "underground telescope" and "key to unlocking the door to the mysteries of the earth", has been restricted by various problems, restricting mankind's exploration and understanding of the earth's interior.

In 2009, in order to meet the great needs of my country's deep earth exploration project, the country launched the "Deep Exploration Technology and Experimental Research Special Project". The fifth topic of the ninth project, headed by Huang Danian, a famous strategic scientist and professor at Jilin University, had the main task of developing the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig to meet the needs of high-end equipment for ultra-deep drilling in my country's deep earth exploration mission. It was headed by Academician Sun Youhong, then vice president of Jilin University.

What is hidden deep inside the earth? This question has always attracted human curiosity.

We turn back the clock to 1959. Outside Datong Town, Heilongjiang Province, a 1,300-meter-deep drilling well gushed out brown oil. People named this place "Daqing". This oil field, which once contributed half of the country's oil and gas production, was "drilled" by the Chinese themselves. 54 years later, still in this place, a scientific plan to listen to the "heartbeat" of Mother Earth is being implemented step by step -

On October 15, 2013, 50 large trailers loaded with the disassembled parts of the "Crust No. 1" set off from Guanghan, Sichuan to the Northeast;

At 00:00 on April 13, 2014, the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig started drilling at the Songke No. 2 well in the Songliao Basin;

On June 2, 2018, the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig completed its "debut", setting a new record for the depth of scientific drilling in Asian continents with a completed well depth of 7,018 meters! This not only means that my country's "underground" plan for deep earth exploration in the field of geology has made significant progress and my country's first success in drilling equipment, but also means that my country's manufacturing of drilling equipment has reached the world's advanced level!

In May 2019, the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig began to carry out ultra-deep oil and gas drilling projects in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. So far, it has completed 6 oil and gas drilling projects with depths exceeding 8,000 meters and 1 well with a depth of over 9,000 meters...

The birth of this "national heavy weapon" that has successfully extended mankind's "visual range" into the earth by thousands or even tens of thousands of meters is not only a vivid manifestation of our province's scientific and technological innovation capabilities, but also a vivid practice of the vast number of scientific and technological workers working hard, relying on themselves, always keeping in mind to firmly grasp the lifeline of science and technology and the initiative of development in their own hands, and promoting high-level scientific and technological self-reliance.

At the National Science and Technology Innovation Conference, the Conference of Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology in 2016, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that advancing into the deep earth is a strategic scientific and technological issue that we must solve. In response to the call issued by the General Secretary, countless scientific and technological workers acted quickly, fearless of hardships, and faced challenges head-on. Huang Danian, a "model of the times", is an outstanding representative among them. As Huang Danian's "comrade-in-arms" during his lifetime, the research and development team of the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig of Jilin University inherited and carried forward Huang Danian's scientist spirit of "having a great heart and serving the country with sincerity", broke through many barriers, spent ten years to sharpen a "drill", and made every effort to "advance into the deep earth".

However, the road of scientific research has never been smooth, let alone it is a road that few people have traveled.

After more than four years of technical research, in 2013, the team, together with Sichuan Honghua Petroleum Equipment Co., Ltd., successfully developed the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig, my country's first 10,000-meter continental scientific drilling equipment. But along with the joy of success, problems also followed. How to ensure that the drill bit does not "go on strike due to heat stroke" under continuous ultra-high temperatures; how to "cut" on an extremely uneven and complex sphere, while ensuring that the wellbore does not collapse or crack, and at the same time, to extract the deep core intact... One problem after another was placed in front of the team.

The road of innovation is led by the brave. If you don't want to be "stuck in the neck", you must bravely enter the "no man's land" of scientific and technological innovation and create a "new high ground" of innovation. Only by achieving independent control of key core technologies can the initiative of development be firmly in your own hands. On the road of scientific and technological innovation full of difficulties and challenges, "holding on to the green mountains and not letting go" is a state, while "blowing away the yellow sand to find gold" is the norm.

"For the development of the 'Crust No. 1' 10,000-meter drilling rig, the team started almost from scratch. During the research and development stage, teachers and students stayed in the Sichuan research and development base for four years. The entire drilling rig design drawings were piled up as high as a person." Speaking of the hardships of the research and development process, Liu Baochang, director of the Surveying Engineering Department of the School of Construction Engineering of Jilin University, was deeply touched.

"It's not easy to get what we want from a depth of 10 kilometers deep in the earth. The drill rod looks very hard on the ground, but when it reaches such a deep place, it is like a noodle." Liu Baochang said that the scientific research process was full of difficulties, but faced with the challenges, no researcher in the team backed down. Everyone worked together, kept exploring, fought bravely, and bravely broke through every level with the spirit of nailing down nails. In the end, they overcame many key technical difficulties on the ground and underground, and achieved a series of innovative results, allowing Jilin University's "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig to shine on the stage of history and successfully climb the "underground Mount Everest."

As a "key" to unlock the mysteries of the deep earth, the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig has solved the three major technical problems of low rotary speed of deep drilling equipment, low degree of equipment automation and low pressure control accuracy of deep drilling drill bits in China. It has made breakthroughs in four key technologies of deep drilling equipment: high-speed full hydraulic top drive drilling, high-precision automatic pipe swing, high-speed automatic unscrewing and unloading of drill pipes, and high-precision automatic drilling. It has formed high-performance deep scientific drilling equipment and supporting devices with independent intellectual property rights, filling the gap in my country's deep continental scientific drilling equipment. The cores obtained by the "Crust No. 1" drilling rig have also created conditions for Chinese scientists to establish archives of the evolution of the earth and provided important data support for national energy security.

"The key technologies of the 'Crust No. 1' 10,000-meter drilling rig have also been successfully applied to the 'Aurora' polar drilling rig and to the Sino-Russian oil and gas exploration project in the Yamal area of ​​the Russian Arctic Circle, creating a precedent for Chinese drilling rigs in the Arctic Circle and breaking the technology monopoly of many countries. The relevant technical achievements have been widely promoted and applied to the 5,000-9,000-meter conventional oil and gas well drilling rig series, and the products have been exported to nearly 30 countries." said Zhao Yan, deputy director of the Survey Engineering Department of the School of Construction Engineering of Jilin University.

Any scientific research achievement is not achieved overnight, but is the result of the sweat and tears of researchers, and the persistence and perseverance of courage to explore, dare to innovate, and make unremitting efforts. The successful development of Jilin University's "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig is a reflection of the spirit of researchers' continuous struggle and long-term efforts, and is also the source of the continuous surging innovation power of Jilin.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, Jilin has kept in mind the instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and transformed his important expositions on scientific and technological innovation into concrete actions to promote the reform and development of science and technology in the new era, and has continuously made new breakthroughs in scientific and technological innovation. Adhere to scientific and technological innovation as the first driving force for high-quality development, develop new quality productivity according to local conditions, and make every effort to win the battle of key core technologies; highlight the "first driving force" of scientific and technological innovation, promote the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation, and accelerate the transformation of more scientific research results into industrial products and development results. This has always been Jilin's unchanging original mission, and it is also the key to Jilin's significant progress in high-quality development and the first breakthrough in Jilin's revitalization.

The research and development results of the "Crust No. 1" 10,000-meter drilling rig have revealed more mysteries of the deep earth and promoted the in-depth development of earth science research. At the same time, it also provides us with more valuable inspiration: only by adhering to the innovation-driven development strategy, deepening the reform of the science and technology system and the construction of the innovation system, and strengthening the construction of basic research and original innovation capabilities, can we continuously climb the peak of science and technology, achieve self-reliance in science and technology, and make great strides towards the depth and breadth of scientific and technological innovation.

Author: Jilin Daily Omnimedia Reporter Li Kaiyu Zhang He