Claudia Alexander is known for being a brilliant scientist, she was the Project Manager for the Galileo spacecraft mission to Jupiter and had worked in the International Rosetta space exploration. Unfortunately, she died at the age of 56.

NASA posted on its website oast July 11 that Alexander died after her 10-year battle with breast cancer, Reuters reports.

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Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California Charles Elachi said, "Claudia brought a rare combination of skills to her work as a space explorer."

Elachi added: "With her doctorate in plasma physics, Alexander's technical credentials were solid, she also had this special understanding of how scientific discovery might affect us all, and how our greatest achievements are the result of teamwork."

Alexander began working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1986 when she joined the team behind the Galileo spacecraft, three years before it was launched on a mission to study Jupiter and the planet's dense atmosphere.

Alexander was the last project manager for NASA's Galileo mission, in which the Twin Spacecraft launched in 1989 made an unprecedented trip to Jupiter, using gravity from Earth and Venus to propel themselves there.

In 2000, she was chosen as the lead U.S project scientist on the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Rosetta mission was the first spacecraft to orbit a comet's nucleus and last year a lander from the Rosetta mothership made the first soft-landing on a comet, according to Reuters.

Alexander was an acclaimed scientist who conducted landmark research on the evolution and interior physics of comets, Jupiter and its moons, solar wind and other subjects. She also authored and co-authored more than a dozen scientific papers.

According to World News, Alexander, who earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan, was named Woman of the Year in 1993.

Alexander originally planned to become a journalist, but her parents steered her in another direction, insisting that she pursue something that would better serve the society.

She said once in an interview that her parents blackmailed her, that she really wanted to go to the University of California at Berkeley, but her parents would only agree to pay for it if she majored in something more useful like engineering, The Detroit News reports.

TagsClaudia Alexander, Galileo Spaecraft, NASA, european space agency, rosetta