Planetary Society Weekly Hangout, Thu Feb 14 1200PT/2000UT: Courtney Dressing

Emily Lakdawalla and Courtney Dressing talked about just how common Earth-sized exoplanets may be in our neighborhood. Courtney and her advisor recently published a paper about Kepler data on nearby planets around cool stars (PDF), which was the subject of a press briefing last week.

Courtney's name should be familiar to Planetary Society members -- nine years ago she was one of a group of 16 high-school students who were at JPL during the first days of the Spirit and Opportunity missions as part of our "Red Rover Goes to Mars" project.

Below is a recording of the event.

Searching around for images of Courtney from her days as a Red Rover Goes to Mars Student Astronaut, I found this awesome B-roll recorded by a professional at JPL as Courtney and her partner Rafael Morozowski were taking a tour of mission operations with NASA's Dave Lavery. I also spotted Mark Lemmon and Jim Bell. At the end, they depart very late at night -- they were working on Mars time and their days ended in the wee hours of the morning. Fun! (The video starts after about 40 seconds of test pattern.)