Nasa scientists have uncovered a hidden relic from the Cold War—a “secret city” buried beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, as reported by Space.com. During a scientific survey in April 2024, a Nasa Gulfstream III aircraft, equipped with radar to map the depth of the ice, revealed the long-forgotten remains of Camp Century, a US military base built in the 1960s.
The base, which had been buried under layers of ice for decades, was part of a top-secret Cold War project called Project Iceworm. The aim was to construct 2,500 miles (4,023 km) of tunnels in Northern Greenland, where nuclear intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) could be hidden and launched at the Soviet Union. “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn’t know what it was at first,” said Chad Greene, a scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before,” he added.
Camp Century, constructed in 1959, consisted of tunnels carved into the ice sheet, but it was abandoned in 1967 due to the high costs and the risk of the tunnels collapsing. Project Iceworm’s legacy lives on in the images now captured by Nasa. The tunnels were initially designed to house missiles capable of withstanding the pressures of launching through the ice.
However, the thawing ice sheet now poses a new threat—dangerous relics from the base, including weapons, fuel, and other contaminants, could soon be exposed to the world. In response, the US government issued a statement in 2017 acknowledging the risks posed by climate change and promising to work with Denmark and Greenland authorities to address the issue.
Scientists also warn that the ongoing thawing of Greenland’s ice sheet could have other implications. “Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” said Alex Gardner, another JPL scientist.
For now, Camp Century stands as a reminder of the Cold War and an opportunity for scientists to study the effects of climate change on Earth’s ice sheets. Nasa plans to use the data from these surveys to inform future research on the impact of warming temperatures.