NASA accidentally discovers hidden Cold War base beneath Greenland ice

A NASA scientist uncovered a Cold War military base under ice in Greenland this April, as reported by NASA’s Earth Observatory on Monday.

Several months ago, scientist Chad Greene was flying aboard a Gulfstream III with engineers in an effort to monitor a radar instrument on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Flying over northern Greenland, Greene was able to photograph the ice sheet from the aircraft window. This image led to the discovery of something buried under ice.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) cryospheric scientist Alex Gardner reported, “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn’t know what it was at first.”

Camp Century, the “city under the ice,” is a notable Cold War site. The military base was constructed in 1959 by the US Army Corps of Engineers. They created a tunnel network within this layer of the ice sheet, but it was abandoned in 1967, leading to its disguise under layers of snow build-up. The facility now lies 100 feet below the surface.

Scientists used radar to map the ice surface by sending out radio waves and testing their reflection time. While past airborne surveys were able to detect some signs of Camp Century under the ice, the April flights were better suited for the task.

NASA’s UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) was mounted onto the modern aircrafts, allowing the vehicles to produce more dimensional maps.

Making history

Greene, who also works at the JPL, explained, “In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before.”

Despite providing crucial information, the added dimension in newer scans also poses challenges in interpreting the images. Scientists have used maps acquired through radars to estimate when melting or thinning of ice might expose the camp again and whether any remaining radioactive or chemical waste is buried with it.

Greene and Gardner did not even intend to photograph Camp Century but rather “to calibrate, validate, and understand the capabilities and limitations of UAVSAR for mapping the ice sheet’s internal layers and the ice-bed interface,” as Greene explained. “Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond … limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” reported Gardner. 

The test flights conducted in April are opening a next-generation ability for mapping in Greenland, Antarctica, and other uncharted territories.