If life was present on these moons, we'd expect to see bacteriophages too.
From a small town in rural New Zealand where the night sky posed questions science class could not answer, Laura Franssen has arrived at one of humanity's most enduring inquiries: are we alone? The twenty-six-year-old AUT microbiology PhD student has been awarded a three-month internship at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, becoming the first microbiologist to receive New Zealand's Space Scholarship and the third consecutive AUT student to earn this distinction. Her work — studying how bacteriophages survive simulated Martian and Europa conditions — reminds us that the search for life beyond Earth begins, quietly and rigorously, with the smallest living things we know.
- The question driving Franssen's research is deceptively simple: if bacteria can survive Earth's most hostile environments, why should other worlds be any different?
- Her experiments expose bacteriophages — viruses that prey on bacteria — to synthetic brines and freeze-thaw cycles mimicking the subsurface conditions of Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa.
- Three applications and three years of persistence were required before the New Zealand Space Scholarship recognized her as its first-ever microbiology recipient.
- AUT's growing pipeline to NASA — three consecutive students, now spanning both engineering and biological sciences — signals an expanding role for New Zealand in international space research.
- When Franssen returns from California, she will complete her PhD in December, carrying findings that could reshape how future missions collect and interpret samples from other worlds.
Laura Franssen grew up in rural Dannevirke, where science resources were thin but the night sky was generous with questions. Now twenty-six, she is bound for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California — the third AUT student in as many years to win this placement, and the first microbiologist ever to receive New Zealand's Space Scholarship.
Her internship, funded through New Zealand's Space Agency and the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, will place her inside a team studying bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — under conditions designed to replicate Mars and the ice-covered moon Europa. The logic is elegant: if microbial life exists on other worlds, the viruses that prey on it likely exist too. Earth's oceans hold ten times more phages than bacterial cells. Franssen's work asks what happens to those phages in extreme freeze-thaw cycles, and what that means for how future missions should search for life.
The path here was not direct. A high school teacher pointed her toward AUT; a single first-year lecture by Professor Donnabella Lacap-Bugler reoriented everything. Lacap-Bugler's question — why assume life cannot survive elsewhere if it thrives in Earth's most hostile corners? — became the hinge of Franssen's career. She stayed, studied, and eventually built her PhD around microbial life in Chile's Atacama Desert, one of Earth's driest places and its closest terrestrial mirror to Mars.
It took three attempts to win the scholarship. Each rejection sharpened her. Lacap-Bugler, who holds long-standing ties with NASA Ames Research Centre, frames Franssen's contribution as part of the quieter, harder work of space science — not building rockets, but learning to read the biological signatures that might one day tell us whether life on Earth is a solitary accident or something the universe does more often than we know.
Laura Franssen spent her childhood in rural Dannevirke, gazing up at a night sky that seemed to hold questions no one around her was equipped to answer. Science resources were scarce in her schools, but her parents fed her curiosity about what lay beyond the atmosphere. Now, at twenty-six, she is heading to California to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory—the third student from Auckland University of Technology in as many years to land this particular prize, and the first microbiologist ever to do so.
The internship, funded through New Zealand's Space Agency and Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, will run for three months. During that time, Franssen will join a team investigating bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—in simulated Martian and Europa environments. The work sounds like science fiction, but it rests on a straightforward logic: if microbial life exists or existed on Mars or the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn, we would expect to find not just bacteria, but the viruses that prey on them. Earth's oceans contain ten times more phages than bacterial cells. The question becomes: why would distant worlds be any different?
Franssen's specific project examines how bacteriophages behave when exposed to synthetic brines and ice conditions—the freeze-thaw cycles that characterize the subsurface environments scientists believe might harbor life. The findings will directly inform how future missions should collect and analyze samples from other worlds. It is work that bridges two disciplines: understanding life as it exists here, in order to recognize it elsewhere.
Her path to this moment was neither straight nor inevitable. In high school at St Peter's College in Palmerston North, a teacher recognized her aptitude for science and suggested AUT. There, in a first-year microbiology lecture, Professor Donnabella Lacap-Bugler posed a question that rewired Franssen's thinking: if single-celled organisms can survive the most hostile conditions on Earth—extreme cold, intense pressure, almost no water—why assume they cannot exist in similar conditions on other planets? That one lecture became the hinge on which her entire career turned.
Franssen continued working with Lacap-Bugler through her undergraduate and graduate studies, gradually narrowing her focus toward astrobiology. Her PhD research now centers on bacterial life in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, one of Earth's driest places and, by many measures, the closest terrestrial analogue to Mars. By studying how microbes adapt and survive in the Atacama's extreme conditions, she and her colleagues are building a toolkit for recognizing life—or the signatures of past life—on other worlds.
It took three applications to win the New Zealand Space Scholarship. Each rejection taught her something; each reapplication made her stronger. When she returns from California in the fall, she will complete her PhD and graduate in December. Lacap-Bugler, who maintains long-standing collaborations with NASA Ames Research Centre, sees Franssen's work as part of a larger mission: not the engineering of rovers or the building of spacecraft, but the harder, quieter work of learning to read the chemical and biological signatures that might tell us whether we are alone in the universe. Franssen is now part of that effort, carrying with her the curiosity that began under a rural New Zealand sky.
Notable Quotes
If life was or is present on these potentially habitable planets and moons, we'd expect to see the presence of bacteriophages too.— Laura Franssen
It's not the engineering and building of rovers, but about analysing samples for possible detection of life outside Earth.— Professor Donnabella Lacap-Bugler
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why bacteriophages specifically? Why not just look for bacteria on Mars?
Because bacteria don't exist in isolation. On Earth, wherever there's bacterial life, there are phages hunting them. If we find bacteria on Mars but no phages, that's strange. It suggests either the environment is too harsh for viruses to survive, or we're missing something about how life actually works there.
And the freeze-thaw cycles matter because?
Because Mars has permafrost. Europa has ice sheets with liquid water underneath. These aren't static environments—they're constantly changing. We need to know whether bacteriophages can survive that cycle, whether they remain infectious, whether they can still do their job of infecting bacteria. If they can't, then our detection strategies need to account for that.
How does studying the Atacama Desert help with all this?
It's a living laboratory. The Atacama is as close as we can get to Mars without leaving Earth. The microbes there have evolved to survive conditions that would kill almost everything else. By understanding how they do it, we learn what to look for on other worlds.
What happens if she finds phages in the Atacama that don't survive the freeze-thaw cycle?
Then we know that future missions need to look for different markers of life. Or we need to sample at different times, or different depths. It changes how we design the search.
Is this just theoretical, or does it actually change how NASA builds missions?
It's both. Right now, NASA is designing the next generation of Mars rovers and planning missions to Europa. The sampling strategies, the instruments they carry, the conditions they preserve samples in—all of that gets informed by research like Laura's. It's not abstract.