A NASA researcher made a surprising discovery deep within Greenland’s ice sheet. Chad Greene, while investigating the ice sheet’s base, unexpectedly stumbled upon a hidden US Army base. The radar data unveiled Camp Century, a Cold War facility buried 100 feet beneath the ice. Constructed between 1959 and 1960, the base, known as “the city under ice,” consists of 21 underground tunnels spanning around 9,800ft. Using radar imagery from their Gulfstream III aircraft, the NASA team could clearly identify the base’s structures.
Alex Gardner from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mentioned that they initially mistook Camp Century for the ice bed they were searching for. The detection of the base was made possible with the help of an Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), a radar technology commonly used for uncovering hidden structures worldwide.
Camp Century was established following a defense agreement between the United States and Denmark in 1951. The base, built with 6,000 tons of materials transported on slow-moving bobsleds, housed a medium-power nuclear reactor known as the PM-2. Scientists stationed at the camp conducted geological studies, uncovering Greenland’s ancient history. However, it is believed that the scientific research conducted at Camp Century was a cover-up for Project Iceworm, a secret US nuclear weapons initiative involving ballistic missiles stored under the ice.
Projected plans for expanding Camp Century to accommodate more missiles were eventually scrapped, leading to the decommissioning of the base in 1967. The presence of nuclear waste at the site, left behind by the US Army, poses environmental concerns. Experts predict that due to climate change, Camp Century may resurface by 2090.
