McMurdo Station: America's Frozen Frontier McMurdo Station is the United States' largest Antarctic research facility, housing up to 1,200 personnel on Ross Island near an active volcano. Far more than a laboratory, it functions as a full industrial community complete with dormitories, cafeterias, a greenhouse, and a bar. Researchers there study ancient climate records locked in ice cores, unique marine ecosystems, volcanic activity, and extremophile organisms with implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Sustained by military airlifts from New Zealand and annual icebreaker resupply missions, and governed by strict Antarctic Treaty environmental laws, McMurdo remains humanity's most ambitious outpost at the bottom of the world.