Japan completes Antarctic mission

April 13, 2006

Japan's 47th Antarctic exploration mission returned to port Thursday carrying prized ice specimens -- and 300 tons of garbage -- collected over 16 months.

The 10,000-year-old ice chips were hacked out of an Antarctic iceberg and are expected to reveal secrets of the region.

The trash hauled aboard the auxiliary ice breaker SHIRASE was waste materials dumped around the Japanese base camp during previous missions.

It is expected it will take two more trips to get all the waste materials collected and returned to Japan for disposal.

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