McDonald Island Habitat Festival
One-year living laboratory • NASA × Unified State Collaboration
Mission & Vision
The McDonald Island Habitat Festival is a twelve-month field experiment and public celebration aimed at designing, testing, and documenting off-world living systems. NASA engineers, Unified State scientists, and citizen innovators will transform this remote sub-Antarctic volcano into a prototype for lunar, Martian, and interstellar micro-colonies.
- Zero-emission geothermal energy harvesting
- Modular lava-foam habitat printing
- Closed-loop hydroponic and algae farms
- Psychosocial adaptation & art residencies
Festival Timeline – Phase 1
🚀 Launch Day
Aug 15 2025 – NASA Dragon X cargo drop & live-streamed unity ceremony.
🏕️ Habitat Build
Sep–Nov 2025 – 3D-print lava-foam domes, deploy geothermal rigs.
🌱 Life-Support Trials
Dec 2025–Mar 2026 – Grow first full meal from closed-loop bioponics.
📡 Open Science Summit
May 2026 – Publish Year-1 data & invite global classrooms to remix designs.
How You Can Participate
Whether you’re a student, artist, engineer, or dreamer, the Festival welcomes your curiosity.
- Open Challenges: submit habitat modules, VR field-guides, or algae recipes.
- Virtual Field Trips: monthly 360° livestreams from the island.
- Citizen-Science Hackathons: decode geothermal telemetry in real time.
Publication & Legacy
All schematics and research will be released under Creative Commons BY-SA. Outcomes will feed directly into NASA’s Artemis base-camp roadmap and Unified State’s “100 Garden Worlds” pledge — ensuring the McDonald prototype sparks a chain of sustainable habitats from the Moon to Proxima b.
Photo by Megan McArthur
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