The hole they used in the end was about 66 centimetres across, which is roughly a man's shoulders, and they got there in stages — an existing narrow bore as a pilot, then a wider pass, then wider again, with a rig called Plan B, a Schramm T130 brought in for water wells. Six hundred-odd metres of rock, and at the bottom of it a workshop gallery you have to actually hit. Miss by a few metres and all you've made is a very deep dry hole. I don't fully follow how they held it on line that far down; the surveying side of drilling has always been slightly beyond me. Breakthrough was 9 October 2010.

The capsule was welded up by ASMAR, the Chilean Navy's shipyard, with some input from NASA people. Fénix 2 — call it half a metre of internal width, spring-loaded wheels on the outside to run against the rock, an oxygen bottle, a headset, lights. And here's the clever bit: a hatch in the floor, so if the thing jammed on the way up the man inside could drop out onto the rope below and be lowered back down rather than sit there.

Manuel González, a rescue specialist from Codelco, rode it down first and waited at the bottom while the others went up. Luis Urzúa, the shift foreman, came last, after 69 days. In the photograph there's the capsule standing behind the handshakes with FÉNIX painted on it, and a helmet in the crowd with a sticker reading Quiero Vivir.