NASA scientist Chad Greene made a surprising discovery beneath Greenland’s ice sheet. While exploring the ice bed, he unexpectedly stumbled upon a hidden US Army base known as Camp Century, a Cold War facility buried 100 feet under the ice. This base, also called “the city under ice,” was constructed over a year between June 1959 and October 1960.
Camp Century consists of 21 underground tunnels spanning approximately 9,800 feet, as reported by the Express. Using radar imagery captured from the Gulfstream III aircraft, Chad and his team identified the distinct structures of the base.
Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who led the project, mentioned that they initially mistook Camp Century for the ice bed they were searching for. To uncover the base, NASA scientists utilized an Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), a radar commonly used to detect hidden structures worldwide.
Established after the Defense of Greenland agreement signed by the United States and Denmark in 1951, Camp Century was intended to provide facilities for NATO armed forces in Greenland. The camp’s construction involved transporting 6,000 tons of materials via slow-moving bobsleds from an army base in Thule, followed by a strenuous 70-hour sled journey.
The engineers carved out 1,000-foot passageways called ‘Main Street’ into the snow and ice before building wooden structures topped with steel roofs. The camp was powered by the PM-2 medium-power nuclear reactor. Although scientists stationed at Camp Century conducted valuable geological research on Greenland’s history, the camp’s true purpose was allegedly to support Project Iceworm, a US nuclear weapons strategy. The camp was designed to house ballistic missiles beneath the ice.
While plans for expanding the camp to accommodate more missiles and soldiers never materialized, Project Iceworm was eventually exposed in 1997 by Danish authorities. Camp Century was decommissioned in 1967, and today it remains abandoned and slowly engulfed by the ice, with a substantial amount of nuclear waste left behind by the US Army.
According to William Colgan, a climate and glacier scientist at York University in Toronto, the camp’s exposure due to climate change is expected by 2090.