Louisa Preston
Astrobiologist
Dr Louisa Preston is an astrobiologist, planetary geologist, and author who studies some of the Earth’s most extreme environments and the life (both human and microbe) that lives or once lived in them. She uses these sites as examples of the kind of places and types of life-forms we think might have once existed on other planetary bodies, such as Mars, Europa and Titan. She is also on the science team for the next European Space Agency Mars mission, the ExoMars 2022 rover ‘Rosalind Franklin’, which will drill into the crust of Mars searching for signatures of buried ancient life. She is also an author, having written and contributed to four popular science books, including her own book ‘Goldilocks and the Water Bears – The Search for Life in the Universe’ published by Bloomsbury.