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The location of Camp Century as seen from the Gulfstream III flown by Greene, Gardner, and their NASA engineering team in April 2024Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
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Workers building the icy trenches at Camp Century in 1960Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory
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Turns out Greene stumbled upon Camp Century — a once-secret military base from the Cold War era.
The startling discovery happened as he flew over northern Greenland in April, some 150 miles east of Pituffik Space Base.
While calibrating radar instruments to study the bedrock beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, the plane’s UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) picked up an unexpected signal.
What appeared on the radar was the long-buried remnants of Camp Century, an underground labyrinth of tunnels and structures built in 1959 by the US military during one of the tensest periods of the Cold War.
Nicknamed the “City Under the Ice,” Camp Century was a marvel of engineering for its time.
Built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the base featured 21 interconnected tunnels spanning over 9,800 feet, hidden under 100 feet of Greenland’s ice sheet.
Officially, it was presented as a scientific research station.
But in reality, Camp Century served as a cover for Project Iceworm, a covert plan to house a network of nuclear missiles in the ice, capable of striking the Soviet Union.
The camp was powered by an innovative portable nuclear reactor —the PM-2A — which supplied electricity and heat to sustain operations in the freezing Arctic conditions.
Inside abandoned Antarctic clifftop ‘ghost station’ where Soviet boffins battled -90C gales 1000s of miles from anywhere
Despite its ambitious goals, the unstable ice proved to be a significant obstacle.
Over time, shifting and melting ice rendered Project Iceworm impractical, and the US abandoned the base in 1967.
The nuclear reactor was removed, but other materials, including hazardous waste, were left behind, eventually becoming entombed in the ice as the base was sealed off by nature.
The true purpose of Camp Century remained a tightly held secret for decades.
It was only years later that the US government disclosed the full extent of Project Iceworm to Denmark, which governs Greenland.
“We were looking for the bed of the ice, and out pops Camp Century,” said Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Initially, the team didn’t recognise what they had found.
But radar data then revealed individual structures within the base’s layout that corresponded to historical maps of the camp’s design.
Greene explained the unexpected nature of the find: “Our goal was to calibrate, validate, and understand the capabilities and limitations of UAVSAR for mapping the ice sheet’s internal layers and the ice-bed interface.”
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The amazing picture of Greenland’s Ice Sheet taken by Chad Greene
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The camp was a front for a secret military project called Project IcewormCredit: Earth Observatory
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The sturdy buildings of Camp Century seem like a blip on this 2D map of the baseCredit: Earth Observatory
Instead, they captured a haunting glimpse of history frozen beneath the surface.
This advanced radar technology provided far more detail than earlier ground-penetrating radar surveys, allowing researchers to create a new map of Camp Century’s remains.
The map shows the tunnels and facilities in remarkable clarity, showcasing the ingenuity of the base’s construction even as it lies in ruins.
Camp Century remains a time capsule of Cold War ambition, ingenuity, and secrecy.
In its heyday, the base represented the cutting edge of military and scientific advancement, with its nuclear reactor being bold leap into Arctic exploration.
Yet, its abandoned tunnels now serve as an eerie reminder of the environmental and political legacies left behind by that era.
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Publish date : 2024-11-25 20:32:00
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