McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station, located at 77°51′S 166°40′E, sits on the southern tip of Ross Island in Antarctica, on the shore of McMurdo Sound, 2,200 miles (3,500 km) due south of New Zealand. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National Science Foundation, and serves both as their Antarctic research facility, and the logistics base for half the continent. All personnel and cargo going to or coming from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station first pass through McMurdo.

1 History
2 Contemporary function
3 Points of Interest
4 External links
5 Categories

McMurdo Station from Observation Hill.

History

The station owes its designation to nearby McMurdo Sound, named for Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo of HMS Terror, which first charted the area in 1841 under the command of British explorer James Clark Ross.

British explorer Robert Falcon Scott first established a base close to this spot in 1902 and built Discovery Hut, still standing adjacent to the harbour at Hut Point. The United States established their first station at McMurdo in 1956, initially called Naval Air Facility McMurdo.

Contemporary function

Today, McMurdo Station is Antarctica's largest community and a functional, modern day science station, which includes a harbour, 3 airfields (2 seasonal), a heliport and over 100 buildings, including the Albert P. Crary Science and Engineering Center and a bowling alley with an antique Brunswick manual pinset machine. There is even a 9-hole disc golf course on site. The primary focus of the work done at McMurdo Station is science, but most of the residents (approximately 1,000 in the summer and fewer than 200 in the winter) are there to provide support for operations, logistics, information technology, construction, and maintenance.

Cargo operations at McMurdo's ice pier in February 1983 involved a race against time before the breakup of the entire dock.

This image of the USNS Southern Cross at McMurdo Station depicts the expeditionary nature that sealift operations face in Antarctica.

An annual sealift by cargo ships as part of Operation Deep Freeze delivers supplies, equipment, and fuel for McMurdo residents. The ships are operated by the U.S. Military Sealift Command and are crewed by civilian mariners. Cargo may range from mail, construction materials, trucks, tractors, dry and frozen food, to scientific instruments. U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers bust a ship channel through ice-clogged McMurdo Sound in order for supply ships to reach Winter Quarters Bay at McMurdo. Additional supplies and personnel are flown in to nearby Williams Field from Christchurch, New Zealand.

McMurdo Station is about 5 km away from Scott Base, the New Zealand science station, and the entire island is located within New Zealand's Ross Dependency Antarctic claim. Recently there has been a large amount of criticism leveled at the base regarding its disposal of untreated refuse, its treatment of non-United States nationals, and its construction projects: in particular the McMurdo-South Pole highway [1]. Despite this, McMurdo (nicknamed "Mac-Town" by its residents) continues to operate as the hub for American activities on the Antarctic continent.