NASA Radar Image Reveals Lost Cold War Military Base Buried Under Ice In Greenland

A NASA radar image has shown a potential lost city under the ice in Greenland. The radar image was taken by scientists as they flew over Greenland on the Gulfstream III jet and is thought to be the remnants of a Cold War military base called Camp Century. 

NASA scans reveal abandoned city under ice

The “city” was built by making a web of tunnels under a near-surface layer of ice under Greenland.

It was built in 1959 and abandoned in 1967. As expected, a lot of snow and ice have accumulated over the camp and any solid structures are now buried 100 feet under the ice.

Prior surveys have given a 2D profile of the sheet, and the flyby in April allowed NASA’s UAVSAR instrument to produce more of a dimensional map with more data to work from.

“In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before,” NASA scientist Chad Greene said.

After mapping the area, maps using conventional radar corroborated the depth estimates and explained that this was indeed where Camp Century was. It also calculated when melting ice could expose the camp again. There could be potentially harmful waste within that needs to be considered.

“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,” Dr Greene explained.

The method and NASA instruments used will also be used in future experiments to measure the thickness of ice sheets within Antarctica and provide estimates of sea levels rising.

Provided by NASA.