Mining revolution: China’s 500-tonne ‘underground carrier’ tunnels a kilometre to mine ore

The fearsome-sounding “Gangtie Jiliang” is designed to do what no machine has ever done before: delve straight down, kilometre after kilometre, into the heart of the Earth.Translated to English as “steel backbone”, Gangtie Jiliang is billed as the world’s first boring machine capable of excavating full-face shafts to depths exceeding 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) in hard rock.Weighing about 500 tonnes and measuring 8.1 metres wide, the machine looks less like mining equipment and more like an “underground aircraft carrier”, according to the state-owned Science and Technology Daily on Tuesday.Developed by the China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), the industrial leviathan has transitioned from its record-breaking assembly to full-scale operations and has been deployed to an iron ore project in northeastern Liaoning province.Its mission is to unlock a hidden world of wealth buried beneath the Earth’s crust.The boring machine has been deployed to an iron ore project in China’s northeastern Liaoning province. Photo: CRCCChina’s deep-Earth mineral deposits are vast. Experts estimate there is twice as much mineral wealth deep underground than what has already been proved near the surface.