The story starts with a flash on a radar screen, then widens into a Cold War echo. In April 2024, a NASA flight over Greenland captured images that led researchers to Camp Century, a city carved into ice. Buried roughly 100 feet down, this military base once masked a bigger plan. Scientists Chad Greene and Alex Gardner read the signature like a fingerprint, so evidence piled up. The discovery links science flights, climate stakes, and nuclear history in one frozen frame.
How NASA identified a military base under Greenland’s ice
During an April 2024 flight over the Greenland Ice Sheet, NASA scientist Chad Greene captured radar echoes that outlined walls and corridors. The team had probed the ice bed, yet the geometry looked human-made. JPL’s Alex Gardner later said they “didn’t know what it was at first,” until patterns clicked.
Follow-up analysis matched the shapes to Camp Century, a 65-year-old facility now entombed 100 feet down. Engineers used Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, akin to LiDAR, yet powered by radio waves. That wavelength penetrates snow efficiently, so subsurface structures glow against the ice like clean-lined negatives, similar to surveys that revealed Maya ruins.
Greene reported that individual buildings and even connecting arches were visible in the returns. Because centimeter-scale motion alters phase, repeat passes sharpen underground maps. The composite left little doubt: Camp Century’s plan survived, and with it the unmistakable footprint of a military base preserved by cold and pressure.
Building a city under ice: logistics, power, and design
Built in secret between June 1959 and October 1960, Camp Century belonged to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Crews carved deep trenches, then set wooden buildings below steel arch roofs. The hidden military base gained a Main Street 1,000 feet long, and its twenty-one tunnels eventually stretched about 9,800 feet.
Moving supplies proved harder than the digging. Roughly 6,000 tons of material traveled by heavy bobsleds that crawled near two miles per hour. Cargo first shipped to Thule, the surface air base, then crossed the ice. The slow haul turned a single leg into a grueling seventy-hour trip in brutal cold.
The architecture faced harsh physics, since shelf snow flows and deforms. Designers balanced weight, span, and maintenance under minus-70 temperatures and 125-mile-per-hour winds. For power, the PM-2 medium-power nuclear reactor became the crown jewel. That compact plant demanded careful operation, yet it kept lights, heat, and instruments running in a “city under the ice.”
Science as cover: cores, soils, and agreements
Camp Century supported early breakthroughs in polar science. Researchers pioneered modern ice-core drilling, then read layered chemistry to mark ancient climates. Soil recovered from beneath the ice told a striking story. Greenland was once green, with forests and diverse wildlife, so climate histories grew longer and more nuanced here.
The larger legal frame dated to 1951, when the United States and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland agreement. The pact authorized NATO forces to use facilities in Greenland. Because Greenland then counted as a Danish county, the deal paved the way for American construction and long-term presence.
The research program looked benign, and its public films reinforced that image. Yet the location, the power plant, and the hardened tunnels also served another purpose. Inside a remote military base, scientific work offered plausible cover while planners explored a riskier Cold War strategy below the ice.
Project Iceworm: the unrealized missile network
Project Iceworm proposed a vast grid of tunnels beneath the ice sheet. Plans envisioned 52,000 square miles of galleries, enough to disperse 600 ballistic missiles. Sixty launch centers would coordinate the force, and as many as 11,000 soldiers would live on site, cycling duties inside an Arctic labyrinth.
The concept faltered because the ice moved, settled, and cracked. Structures required constant reshaping, and logistics strained credibility. Political sensitivities increased, since Denmark had not been informed about the missile plan. The scheme never launched, and the Camp Century campus stood as a proof-of-concept, not an arsenal.
By 1967, the facility was decommissioned and abandoned. The Danish Institute of International Affairs later publicized the nuclear strategy in 1997, and the revelations reshaped archives. Fifty-seven years after closure, the map still slept under snow. The episode showed how a concealed military base can challenge democratic oversight for decades.
Long-term risks from waste below a military base
During thirty-three months of operation, the PM-2 reactor generated more than 47,000 gallons of nuclear waste, according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Crews removed the reactor hardware when the site closed, yet waste stayed behind. The material now lies frozen, sealed under accumulating layers of snow.
Climate change complicates that story. As regional warming accelerates, models suggest surface ablation will migrate inland. One expert study projected the Camp Century area could begin net ice loss by 2090. That threshold turns buried hazards into future management problems, so governing responsibility becomes the pressing question.
William Colgan told The Guardian in 2016 that planners believed exposure would never occur, because warming was not even a term of art in the 1960s. The physics now differ, and accountability matters. The legacy of a military base thus intersects with public health, cleanup logistics, and Arctic diplomacy.
What this icy discovery asks of science and policy
Camp Century returned to view because better sensors turned the ice transparent. The find links bold engineering, secret planning, and present-day risk in one continuous timeline. Because the reactor’s by-products remain, future warming could expose them, so cooperation will decide outcomes. A clear map now exists, and the job is to pair it with clear rules. When science lights up the past, a buried military base becomes more than history; it becomes a test of shared responsibility.