NASA’s bleeding-edge radar has captured a secret Cold War base under Greenland’s receding ice sheet
In context: Greenland hosts the second-largest body of ice in the world. During the Cold War, the US Army wanted to use this glacier to hide a nuclear base that could quickly strike the Soviet Union in the event of a nuclear conflict. The base can still be seen in great detail using NASA’s latest penetrating radar technology.
NASA performed a scientific mission earlier this year, surveying Greenland’s massive ice sheet to test the limits and capabilities of its Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) technology. The agency didn’t expect to “see” anything interesting down there, yet they rediscovered a long-abandoned base built by the US during the Cold War.
The UAVSAR technology is an imaging radar instrument designed to collect measurements of Earth’s deformation. In April 2024, NASA deployed the device on a Gulfstream III aircraft flying over Greenland’s territory. The US space agency planned to calibrate, validate, and test the device, drawing new maps of the ice sheet’s internal layers down to the solid bedrock.
During the test, NASA researchers got an unprecedented view of a former US base known as Camp Century. The secret site hosted a Cold War program known as Project Iceworm, which planned to build 2,500 miles of “underground” tunnels to hide nuclear ballistic missiles. These modified “Iceman” missiles were designed to launch through the ice sheet, striking sensible targets within Soviet Union territory.
The US Army chose Greenland for Project Iceworm because of the country’s proximity to Russia. Construction on Camp Century began in 1959 but was abandoned in 1967 because the tunnels faced the constant threat of shifting ice. Before abandoning the project, Washington planned to hide 600 nuclear missiles 100 feet below the icy surface.
NASA rediscovered Camp Century base through changes in the ice. The April 2024 mission helped confirm that the UAVSAR technology can effectively measure Earth’s surface. The secret “city under the ice” had previously been surveyed by other airborne missions. However, UAVSAR detected individual structures in the base that had never been seen before.
Greenhouse emissions and global warming are quickly melting Greenland’s ice sheet, and scientists estimate that the glacial formation will likely disappear entirely within 10,000 years. Millions of cubic kilometers of water will be lost, and the polluting materials hidden underground at Camp Century could take generations to clean up.
