NASA scientist takes stunning photo of vast ice sheet – and accidentally discovers top secret ‘city’ buried deep beneath

A NASA idiosyncratic connected a regular probe ngo accidentally discovered an unthinkable relic hidden heavy beneath the ice.

Chad Greene was snapping a stunning photograph of the immense Greenland Ice Sheet erstwhile his plane's radar detected the remnants of a mysterious "city".

Turns retired Greene stumbled upon Camp Century — a once-secret subject basal from the Cold War era.

The startling find happened arsenic helium flew implicit bluish Greenland successful April, immoderate 150 miles eastbound of Pituffik Space Base.

While calibrating radar instruments to survey the bedrock beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, the plane’s UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) picked up an unexpected signal.

What appeared connected the radar was the long-buried remnants of Camp Century, an underground labyrinth of tunnels and structures built successful 1959 by the US military during 1 of the tensest periods of the Cold War.

Nicknamed the “City Under the Ice,” Camp Century was a marvel of engineering for its time.

Built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the basal featured 21 interconnected tunnels spanning implicit 9,800 feet, hidden nether 100 feet of Greenland’s crystal sheet.

Officially, it was presented arsenic a technological probe station.

But successful reality, Camp Century served arsenic a screen for Project Iceworm, a covert program to location a web of atomic missiles successful the ice, susceptible of striking the Soviet Union.

The campy was powered by an innovative portable atomic reactor —the PM-2A — which supplied energy and vigor to prolong operations successful the freezing Arctic conditions.

Despite its ambitious goals, the unstable crystal proved to beryllium a important obstacle.

Over time, shifting and melting crystal rendered Project Iceworm impractical, and the US abandoned the basal successful 1967.

The atomic reactor was removed, but different materials, including hazardous waste, were near behind, yet becoming entombed successful the crystal arsenic the basal was sealed disconnected by nature.

The existent intent of Camp Century remained a tightly held concealed for decades.

It was lone years aboriginal that the US authorities disclosed the afloat grade of Project Iceworm to Denmark, which governs Greenland.

“We were looking for the furniture of the ice, and retired pops Camp Century,” said Alex Gardner, a cryospheric idiosyncratic astatine NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Initially, the squad didn’t recognise what they had found.

But radar information past revealed idiosyncratic structures wrong the base’s layout that corresponded to humanities maps of the camp’s design.

Greene explained the unexpected quality of the find: “Our extremity was to calibrate, validate, and recognize the capabilities and limitations of UAVSAR for mapping the crystal sheet’s interior layers and the ice-bed interface.”

Instead, they captured a haunting glimpse of history frozen beneath the surface.

This precocious radar technology provided acold much item than earlier ground-penetrating radar surveys, allowing researchers to make a caller representation of Camp Century’s remains.

The representation shows the tunnels and facilities successful singular clarity, showcasing the ingenuity of the base’s operation adjacent arsenic it lies successful ruins.

Camp Century remains a clip capsule of Cold War ambition, ingenuity, and secrecy.

In its heyday, the basal represented the cutting borderline of subject and technological advancement, with its atomic reactor being bold leap into Arctic exploration.

Yet, its abandoned tunnels present service arsenic an eerie reminder of the biology and governmental legacies near down by that era.