⇒ Currently employed at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin
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Laura Jentzsch
Technische Universität Berlin
Straße des 17. Juni 135
10623 Berlin
Room ER122
l.jentzsch@tu-berlin.de
Tel.: 030 314-79632
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I graduated with a Master of Science in geology in 2018 at the Freie Universität Berlin with a special focus on microbialites, which display the oldest sedimentological fossils on Earth, making them essential features regarding the question of when life first occurred on our planet.
In the same year, I joined the astrobiology research group at the Technische Universität Berlin, where one of my projects focuses on a potentially habitable phase of our early Moon.
(Link to the moon project)
This project is based on the recently published discussion from Schulze-Makuch and Crawford, 2018) about whether our Moon could have had a habitable phase shortly after its formation and again at about 3.5 billion years ago. From an astrobiological point of view, the question whether microorganisms could have maintained or even thrived under these conditions is of particular interest.
To test this hypothesis, we conduct experiments in a lunar environmental simulation chamber at the Open University of London, where we expose different organisms to the conditions predicted to have existed on the early Moon. These are characterized by low pressure (1% of Earth’s gravity), different atmospheric composition (mainly CO and small amounts of H2S and water) and a volcanic ground material (lunar regolith).