Rosario's brows had knit tighter, confused, at the matter-of-fact reply. She knew she'd... had a short active life? Or she thought, knew, she was going to have one? Either way, Rosario felt like there was something she was missing, and she'd opened her mouth to ask when Estella had been summoned away.
Then the presentation had begun, and before long Rosario's thoughts were being carried off in a different direction, swept up in talk of coronagraphy and adaptive optics and spectroscopy, in high-res photos of high-tech equipment and low-res imagery of far-off systems. They walked through the roles of the various people on stage, how each individual piece had come together to capture direct imaging of distant exoplanets, what they'd learned and what they hoped still to uncover, and Rosario drank it all in with rapt attention. By the time the Q&A was done and the applause had petered out, Rosario had all but forgotten the oddness of that comment.
The talk (and perhaps the champagne) had helped to settle the jitters in her stomach, and she smiled warmly when Estella caught her eye across the room. "That was brilliant," she said, once she'd rejoined the woman. "Really brilliant. I hope the press helps drum up some extra funding for you. For the project, I mean."