In this free CU on the Weekend lecture, Assistant Professor Kevin France will give an overview of recent discoveries in extrasolar planets and how CU Boulder is leading the way in studying these planets. NASA is currently developing the concept for Ultraviolet/Optical/InfraRed Surveyor (LUVOIR) to discover ‘Pale Blue Dots’ around Sun-like stars beyond our solar system and probe their atmospheres for signs of life. France will focus on the role CU Boulder is playing in this story and emphasize how CU’s space-flight experiments on rockets and small satellites today are paving the way for the instruments LUVOIR will require in the next decade.