Last month, a team of scientists emerged from a year-long experiment to test what survival might look like for the first colonists on Mars.

But while setting up a human colony on Mars seems like a journey into the unknown, the research community in the Antarctic is already encountering – and in some cases solving – many of the same problems we might face on new worlds. And those problems are not all environmental.

Dallas Rogers speaks with Western Sydney University Associate Professor Juan Francisco Salazar about his use of documentary film to study the way humans interact with each other and their environment in Antarctica, and what it might mean for colonising new planets.

Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcast on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio.

Additional Audio

• FreeSound - Morosopher, “Rumbling wind & ice skating”

• FreeSound - Cobratronik, “Wind Arctic Cold”

Music

• Footage Firm Ltd - 98970.html">“Space Technology”

• Footage Firm Ltd - “Flying”

• Footage Firm Ltd - bell-98376.html">“Ambient Bell Music”

• Footage Firm Ltd - communication-horror.html">“Alien Communication Horror”

• Footage Firm Ltd - Ambient Swirl

• Footage Firm Ltd - tune-60s.html">“Universe Tune 60s”

Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio in February 2016.