Speaking over a cacophony of humming machines in a crammed Swiss laboratory, François Burgay talks about the quiet, open skies above Mont Blanc. "At 4,200m above the sea, you'd never expect the night to be so bright," he says. It's the lack of light pollution from Earth that gives the sky its unique milky quality.

"I think I can speak for many of my peers when I say that to do this job you need to be an explorer at heart," he smiles.

Burgay, a glaciologist with the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in Italy, camped on the iconic peak separating France and Italy for a week in August 2016, the first field mission of his career. As part of the project Ice Memory, he was there to collect ice cores from the Col du Dome glacier, which were then flown downhill and stored in the lab in Grenoble. One day, the researchers hope, part of these ice cores will travel all the way down to Antarctica, where a bespoke vault built out of snow will preserve the knowledge it contains for centuries ahead.

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Following this first mission, the team braved the Illimani mountain in Bolivia, this time reaching a glacier on the side of a 6,300m-high (20,669ft) peak, and collecting cores that had to carried down by foot, as helicopters were not available. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is next on the list, with an expedition planned for later this year, and more endangered glaciers will follow as new international partners join the Italian-French initiative.