Sad, sad loss: Claudia Alexander of NASA and JPL dies at 54.

Claudia Alexander was a planetary scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was the 17th African American woman to get a PhD in physics or astronomy. She was the last project manager of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and until the time of her passing had served as project manager and scientist of NASA's role in the Rosetta mission to study comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Remember the rendezvous with the comet last year?) In her spare time, Alexander wrote books on science for children and mentored young people, especially African American girls. "She wanted children of color to see themselves as scientists," her sister told reporters. Love that.

“This is among the purposes of my life — to take us from states of ignorance to states of understanding with bold exploration that you can’t do every day.” - Claudia Alexander