NASA Radar Reveals Cold War ‘City Under the Ice’

A squad flying implicit Greenland this past April spotted thing unnatural successful the immense crystal expanse below: an abandoned metropolis nether the ice.

It sounds far-fetched, but the metropolis is existent and younger than you mightiness think. It is Camp Century, a subject basal built retired beneath Greenland by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers successful 1959. The team’s April 2024 flyby revealed Camp Century arsenic an aberrational radar awesome successful an different desolate swath of Greenland.

“We were looking for the furniture of the crystal and retired pops Camp Century,” said Alex Gardner, a cryospheric idiosyncratic astatine NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a subordinate of the team, successful an Earth Observatory release. “We didn’t cognize what it was astatine first.”

Camp Century was built successful a frigid portion of the world, wherever temperatures dip to -70° Fahrenheit (-57° Celsius) and upwind speeds tin transcend 120 miles per hr (193 kilometers per hour). Nevertheless, the engineering corps built a sprawling basal that could big 200 soldiers astatine a time.

When Camp Century was built it was nearer to the surface, but the tract was abandoned successful 1967. In the intervening 57 years, astatine slightest 100 feet (30 meters) of snowfall and crystal person accumulated connected apical of the site. The 47,000 gallons of radioactive discarded produced by Camp Century’s atomic reactor was buried on with it, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

A passageway successful Camp Century successful 1966. Photo: National Archives

Although abandoned for six decades, the enactment done astatine Camp Century continues to uncover details astir Earth’s history. Soil cores recovered from the tract are inactive analyzed today—with methods that didn’t beryllium erstwhile they were recovered—to assistance archer the communicative of Earth’s past climate. It’s casual to hide that millions of years ago, Greenland was a verdant landscape resplendent with mastodons, horseshoe crabs, piney forests, geese, and different critters. The cores recovered astatine Camp Century shed airy connected earlier conditions connected Earth, helping scientists foretell the clime successful our planet’s future.

Though Camp Century was spotted successful erstwhile radar surveys, the April flyby utilized NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) to representation Greenland’s surface. The caller squad was not looking for Camp Century connected their bluish sojourn; they were investigating retired the UAVSAR’s quality to representation the interior layers of the crystal expanse and the mode the crystal expanse meets the crystal furniture astir a mile beneath the surface.

“In the caller data, idiosyncratic structures successful the concealed metropolis are disposable successful a mode that they’ve ne'er been seen before,” said Chad Greene, besides a cryospheric idiosyncratic astatine JPL, successful the aforesaid release.

Lost cities are mostly recovered successful dense rainforest, wherever archaeologists marque usage of lidar imaging to spot structures hidden underneath the dense foliage. Earlier this year, 1 specified squad found thousands of Maya buildings successful Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The caller survey successful Greenland made usage of the aforesaid principle to find Camp Century, though it made usage of vigor waves to find the determination of the deserted tract alternatively of laser light.

The caller radar representation (at the apical of this article) bash distort immoderate aspects of the site’s layout. For one, the crystal furniture (represented arsenic the bladed greenish enactment moving parallel to the ice’s surface) appears to beryllium supra Camp Century, adjacent though it’s astir a mile beneath it.

The UAVSAR trial came disconnected without a hitch, and contained an easter ovum from the Cold War. Though determination are concerns that melting of Greenland’s crystal expanse could re-expose the campy and the assorted wastes wrong (including radioactive and biological), for present the representation is simply a quirky reminder of our country’s subject history.