[Síguenos ahora también en Whatsapp. Da clic aquí]

NASA published radar images abandoned US military base “Camp of the Century”relic Cold War under the ice, taken “accidentally” during aerial photography in Greenland.

The images were taken last April by agency scientists. Chad Greenduring a flight in which the radar instrument was monitored during explored the Greenland ice sheet.

There is a camp under the ice! 🤯

New radar image obtained @NASAJPL Scientists testing UAV instruments have identified structural elements of Camp Century, an abandoned US military base that is now buried under the Greenland ice sheet. https://t.co/mksKUpXA59 pic.twitter.com/NZszT5PFlI

— NASA Earth (@NASAEarth) November 26, 2024

Flying approximately 160 km east of Pituffik Space Base US Space Force in the north Greenland, Greene took a photograph from an airplane window showing a vast, barren expanse of ice sheet. That was when The radar suddenly detected something buried in the ice.

“We were looking for an ice bed, and Camp Century appeared,” says the statement Alex Gardner cryosphere scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)who helped lead the project. “We didn’t know what it was at first.”

A NASA plane has discovered the site of secret Cold War-era nuclear missile tunnels beneath the Greenland ice sheet.

“We were looking for an ice bed and found Camp Century. “We didn’t know what it was at first.”

NASA scientists conducting research on Greenland’s Arctic ice sheets have… pic.twitter.com/68wj84TcUn

— Brian Basson (@BassonBrain) November 26, 2024

City under ice
Camp Century, also known as “city under ice”is a relic of the Cold War.

US Army Corps of Engineers built military base in 1959 cutting a network of tunnels in the near-surface layer of the ice sheet. After its closure in 1967 Snow and ice continued to accumulate and Solid structures associated with the object now lie at least 30 meters below the surface..

Radar measures distance by sending out radio waves and measuring the time it takes for them to reflect back to the sensor. Like ultrasound for ice sheets, scientists can use radar to map the ice surfaceits inner layers and the bedrock beneath them.

Previous aerial photographs flown over Camp Century They found traces of the base in the ice. Used on these flights regular ground penetrating radar, which points straight down and creates a two-dimensional profile of the ice sheet. From this point of view, strong structures Camp Century They appear as dots on deformed ice sheets.

However, flights in April 2024 had UAV (NASA Synthetic Aperture Radar for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) mounted in the belly of the aircraft. The system looks down and sideways, creating maps with higher dimensions.

“According to new data, individual structures of the secret city are visible in a way they’ve never seen before,” he said. Green, Also cryosphere scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Comparing the new radar map Camp Century Historical maps of the base’s planned layout show that parallel structures coincide with tunnels built to house a number of facilities.

Purchased by accident

Scientists used maps obtained from conventional radar to confirm this. depth estimates Camp Centurypart of the effort to assess when melting and thinning ice sheets could again endanger the camp and any biological, chemical and radioactive waste the rest was buried with him. The scientific usefulness of the new UAV image of Camp Century remains to be seen; For now, it remains a new curiosity, acquired by accident.

Green and Gardenr they did not intend to capture the image Camp Century.

“Our goal was to calibrate, test and understand Capabilities and limitations of UAVs for mapping the internal layers of the ice sheet and the ice layer interface,” he said. Green.

Ultimately it is expected that These instruments help scientists measure the thickness of ice sheets under similar Antarctic conditions and to constrain estimates of future sea level rise.

(Europe Press)