A surprising discovery was made by a NASA scientist during an exploration beneath Greenland’s ice sheet. Chad Greene, while mapping the ice bed, unexpectedly came across a hidden US Army base. The radar images unveiled Camp Century, a Cold War installation buried 100 feet below the ice, also known as “the city under ice,” which was built over a year starting in 1959. The base, consisting of 21 underground tunnels spanning approximately 9,800 feet, was identified through radar scans from the Gulfstream III aircraft used by the team.
Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), expressed astonishment, saying, “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn’t know what it was at first.” The base was exposed using an Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), a radar technology commonly used to detect hidden structures worldwide.
Established under the Defense of Greenland agreement between the United States and Denmark in 1951, Camp Century was designed to allow NATO forces to utilize facilities in Greenland for defense purposes. The camp, built with 6,000 tons of material transported on slow-moving bobsleds, housed a PM-2 medium-power nuclear reactor that powered the site. While scientific research was conducted at the camp, it is believed that these activities served as a cover for Project Iceworm, a US nuclear weapons initiative involving storing ballistic missiles beneath the ice.
Despite plans for expansion to accommodate 600 missiles and additional personnel, Project Iceworm was never fully implemented, leading to the decommissioning of Camp Century in 1967. The camp’s true purpose was revealed in 1997, and it has since been abandoned, with remnants, including 47,000 gallons of nuclear waste, left behind. Experts predict that Camp Century, now at risk due to climate change, may be exposed by 2090.