NASA expedition finds secret nuclear city under the ice in Greenland
21 January 05:13
NASA scientists exploring the Greenland ice sheets have discovered a unique abandoned “city under the ice” that was built by the US military during the Cold War. It is reported by Komersant ukrainskyi with reference toInteresting Engineering.
According to the NASA Earth Observatory, the discovery was made in April 2024 during tests of the new UAVSAR radar.
The radar was installed on a Gulfstream III aircraft that was patrolling the globe over northern Greenland, 240 kilometers from the Pituffik space base.
The scientists were looking to measure the glacier’s depth and underground rock layers, but ended up discovering an abandoned US military base known as Camp Century, which was built during the Cold War. The base consists of tunnels cut right into the ice sheet.
The radar images allowed scientists to see the structures at the site of this military base in a way that had never been seen before.

At first, the researchers did not know what exactly they had found, as their task was to study the underlying rocks, but later it turned out that they had stumbled upon one of the most secretive military installations of the Cold War era.
“Now it’s an abandoned relic, overflowing with hazardous waste, locked in the ice, but not necessarily out of danger. With the melting of the Greenland ice, the ghosts of Camp Century may soon surface, threatening both the environment and international relations,” the article says.
What is known about the Camp Century base
The Camp Century base was part of the secret Iceworm project, aimed at building an underground network of tunnels in the Greenland ice sheet. The plan was to build more than 4,000 km of tunnels to house intercontinental ballistic missiles that could be aimed at the Soviet Union.
Construction of the base began in 1959, but due to the high cost and difficulties associated with constant changes in the ice cover, the project was terminated in 1967. As a result, only 21 tunnels about 3 km long were built, but the missiles were never deployed.
The Americans saw the north of Greenland as an ideal place to deploy nuclear missiles, as the island is located close to the Soviet Union. The project envisaged the construction of tunnels up to 9 meters below the ice surface, where it was planned to store Minuteman IRBM missiles.
In 2016, a group of scientists who revisited the Camp Century site issued a dire warning. As climate change accelerates the melting of Greenland’s ice, the toxic residues buried beneath it – radioactive cooling water, lead, fuel oil and PCBs – threaten to surface again by 2100.