Expedition to Antarctic trillion-tonne mega-iceberg to hunt for sunken Ernest Shackleton's Endurance

A team of scientists will for the first time search the wreck of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's doomed ship that was crushed in ice more than 100 years ago. Scientists on board the SA Agulhas II will leave for the Weddell Sea in Antarctica on New Year's day and head towards the Larsen C ice shelf. The team want to find and search Shackleton's lost Endurance vessel, which sank in 1915, with robotic submarines and drones. As part of one of the most ambitious polar expeditions in recent years, the scientists will also try and discover why a trillion tonne iceberg the size of Northumberland broke off the ice shelf and floated 28 miles (45km) last year. The team of experts, technicians and researchers are travelling to the region to study what pressures the shelf is under and what life survives in the extreme conditions.