The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) was an international marine research program, running from 2003 to 2013. The program used heavy drilling equipment mounted aboard ships to monitor and sample sub-seafloor environments. With this research, the IODP documented environmental change, Earth processes and effects, the biosphere, solid earth cycles, and geodynamics. The program began a new 10-year phase with the International Ocean Discovery Program, from the end of 2013. Navigating the route to discovery Scientific ocean drilling represented the longest running and most successful international collaboration among the Earth sciences. Scientific ocean drilling began in 1961 with the first sample of oceanic crust recovered aboard the CUSS 1, a modified U.S. Navy barge. American author John Steinbeck, also an amateur oceanographer, documented Project Mohole for LIFE Magazine. Legacy programs The Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), established in June 1966, operated the Glomar Challenger in drilling and coring operations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The Challenger’s coring operations enabled DSDP to provide the next intellectual step in verifying the hypothesis of plate tectonics associated with seafloor spreading, by dating basal sediments on transects away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In June 1970, the Challenger's DSDP engineers devised a way to replace worn drill bits and then re-enter boreholes for deeper drilling while in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York, in of water. This required the use of sonar scanning equipment and a large-scale re-entry cone. Process-oriented Earth studies continued from 1985 until 2003 aboard the JOIDES Resolution, which replaced the Glomar Challenger in January 1985 as DSDP morphed into the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). The JOIDES Resolution is named for the 200-year-old HMS Resolution which explored the Pacific Ocean and Antarctica under the command of Captain James Cook. The Ocean Drilling Program contributed significantly to increased scientific understanding of Earth history, climate change, plate tectonics, natural resources, and geohazards. ODP discoveries included validation of: fluids circulating through the ocean floor; the formation of gigantic volcanic plateaus at phenomenal rates unknown today; natural methane frozen deep within marine sediments as gas hydrate; a microbial community living deep within oceanic crust; climate change cycles IODP funding agencies National consortia and government funding agencies supported IODP science and drilling platform operations. Participation in IODP was proportional to investment in the program. Contributing member The European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD)