The Real Story Of Project Iceworm

In April, scientists and engineers flew a plane over northern Greenland to test a radar device. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Chad Greene photographed the white expanse below them 150 miles east of Pituffik Space Base. Radar also found an abandoned Cold War outpost beneath the ice which was startling.

“We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Alex Gardner, who led the experiment, said. Not knowing what it was at first.

Known as the “city under the ice,” Camp Century was a 1959 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers military post in Greenland. It was near the surface, but decades of snow and ice have buried it at least 100 feet underground. According to Andrew Paul of Popular Science, Camp Century marketed arctic research back then. Its scientists collected the first ice core samples, which are still used in study, but it also housed Project Iceworm, a top-secret Cold War expedition.

The clandestine operation sought to shelter and launch missiles in ice tunnels. Space.com's Brett Tingley says the "Iceman" nuclear missiles might launch through the ice sheet. They might target the USSR.

According to a February 1960 Popular Science article, Army Engineers and the Danish Government successfully built a community 800 miles from the North Pole, proving that the Arctic can be tamed. Popular Science reports that 100 scientists, engineers, and soldiers will move in late this year to a cozy, pleasant, and warm residence. The U.S. army didn't immediately inform Denmark of Project Iceworm's genuine origins.

Camp Century's construction in a remote area where temperatures may plummet below - 70 degrees Fahrenheit and wind gusts can exceed 120 mph is amazing. According to Newsweek's Jess Thomson, the facility was one of the first to employ a portable nuclear reactor, which was evacuated in 1967 when the camp and Project Iceworm were abandoned due to the impracticality of sustaining the construction amid the continually changing ice sheet.

The University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences estimated that 53,000 gallons of diesel fuel, 63,000 gallons of wastewater (including sewage), and unknown amounts of reactor low-level radioactive coolant were left behind.

The location may contain polychlorinated biphenyls, according to a 2016 research. Scientists worry that Earth's increasing temperatures may melt Camp Century's ice and reveal the garbage.

“When we looked at the climate simulations, they suggested that rather than perpetual snowfall, it seems that as early as 2090, the site could transition from net snowfall to net melt,” York University climate and glacier scientist William Colgan, co-author of the 2016 study, said. “Once the site transitions from net snowfall to net melt, the wastes melt out irreversibly.”

Airborne surveys have discovered Camp Century, but the statement says the radars created two-dimensional maps with little resolution. NASA's UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), situated on the plane's belly, gave a map with more dimensionality than earlier data when the crew detected it in April. The findings appear to match historical record of the location.

References

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nasa-radar-detects-abandoned-site-of-secret-cold-war-project-in-greenland-a-city-under-the-ice-180985550/

https://www.livescience.com/space/we-didnt-know-what-it-was-at-first-nasa-aircraft-uncovers-site-of-secret-cold-war-nuclear-missile-tunnels-under-greenland-ice-sheet

https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/project-iceworm