McMurdo Station is a U.S. Antarctic research centre located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National Science Foundation. The station is the largest community in Antarctica, capable of supporting up to 1,258 residents, and serves as the United States Antarctic science facility. All personnel and cargo going to or coming from Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station first pass through McMurdo.

A dog from the K9 Division of the Sri Lanka Army’s Commando Regiment performs during an event to mark International Children’s Day at a school in Welisara, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 01 October 2016. Sri Lanka marks the Children's Day on 01 October with more emphasis on prevention of child abuse. (Photo by M.A. Pushpa Kumara/EPA)

Monaco's Princess Charlotte Casiraghi arrives to attend a mass at the Saint Nicholas Cathedral during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2016 in Monaco. (Photo by Valery Hache/Reuters)

Rooftops of solar powered houses are pictured in Ota, 80 km northwest of Tokyo in this October 28, 2008 file photo. One by one, Japan is turning off the lights at the giant oil-fired power plants that propelled it to the ranks of the world's top industrialised nations. With nuclear power in the doldrums after the Fukushima disaster, it's solar energy that is becoming the alternative. Solar power is set to become profitable in Japan as early as this quarter, according to the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation (JREF), freeing it from the need for government subsidies and making it the last of the G7 economies where the technology has become economically viable. (Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)

Students rush past the bodies of inmates outside the Croix-des-Bouquets Civil Prison after an attempted breakout, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, February 25, 2021. At least seven people were killed and one injured on Thursday after eyewitnesses told The Associated Press that several inmates tried to escape from a prison in Haiti’s capital. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

Sarah Bui poses for photographer, Brian Le around blossoming cherry trees, near the Tidal Basin on Thursday March 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

People are seen on a street in Havana December 17, 2014. Stunned Cubans celebrated an apparent end to decades of conflict with the United States on Wednesday after both governments said they would restore diplomatic relations cut off in 1961. Many said they expected a restoration of ties would lead to the end of a U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, which is vilified daily in the official media and which Cubans accept as a key cause of widespread poverty on the island. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Hamar women dance before a bull jumping ceremony in Ethiopia's southern Omo Valley region near Turmi on September 19, 2016. The Hamar are a Nilotic ethnic group in Ethiopia. The construction of the Gibe III dam, the third largest hydroelectric plant in Africa, and large areas of very “thirsty” cotton and sugar plantations and factories along the Omo river are impacting heavily on the lives of tribes living in the Omo Valley who depend on the river for their survival and way of life. (Photo by Carl De Souza/AFP Photo)