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Photos: The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission

Claudia Alexander, on the view deck of mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was the project scientist overseeing NASA's support role in the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission.

Claudia Alexander, on the view deck of mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was the project scientist overseeing NASA’s support role in the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission.

  (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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Claudia Alexander has spent more than a decade working on landing a spacecraft on the surface of a speeding comet. On Wednesday, the NASA scientist will be with her counterparts at the European Space Agency’s operations center in Germany, waiting to hear if the spacecraft made it.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission

Claudia Alexander was 40 when she was brought on as project scientist on the Rosetta mission in 2000. NASA “wanted someone who could be with the project all the way through,” she said.  (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission

Being an African American woman has helped scientist Claudia Alexander act as a liaison between NASA and the ESA, she says. “I’m used to walking between two different cultures.”  (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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