Carolyn Parcheta has been intrigued by volcanoes since sixth grade when she watched a scientist take a sample of lava on a science TV show.

"I said to myself, I'm going to do that some day," Parcheta told NASA. Parcheta is now a NASA postdoctoral fellow based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.

Volcano exploration can be tricky, so Parcheta and her co-advisor, a robotics researcher at JPL named Aaron Parness, are creating robots that can make the trip and gather the intel.

"We don't know exactly how volcanoes erupt," Parcheta told NASA. "We have models but they are all very, very simplified. This project aims to help make those models more realistic."

Parcheta was a finalist in National Geographic's Expedition Granted campaign and was awarded $50,000 as the next "great explorer," according to NASA.

"Having Carolyn in the lab has been a great opportunity for our robotics team to collaborate with someone focused on the geology," Parness told NASA. "Scientists and engineers working together on such a small team is pretty rare, but has generated lots of great ideas because our perspectives on the problems are so different."

NASA is also interested in what these robotic volcano conquistadors could mean for alien volcanoes. Earth and Mars both have fissures from which magma erupts. The same might be true for other extraterrestrial volcanoes like the ones on the moon, Mercury, Enceladus and Europa, according to NASA.

"In the last few years, NASA spacecraft have sent back incredible pictures of caves, fissures and what look like volcanic vents on Mars and the moon," Parness told NASA. "We don't have the technology yet to explore them, but they are so tantalizing! Working with Carolyn, we're trying to bridge that gap using volcanoes here on Earth for practice. We're learning about how volcanoes erupt here on Earth, too, and that has a lot of benefits in its own right."

VolcanoBot 1 was developed and used by Parcheta, Parness and JPL co-advisor Karl Mitchell to explore how volcanoes erupt. VolcanoBot 1 is a 12-inch version of another creation of Parness' called the Durable Reconnaissance and Observation Platform (DROP).

"We took that concept and redesigned it to work inside a volcano," Parcheta told NASA.

In May 2014, VolcanoBot 1 rolled down an inactive fissure on the active Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. VolcanoBot 1 descended 82 feet in two different spots, but never reached the bottom (the tether wasn't long enough).

"In order to eventually understand how to predict eruptions and conduct hazard assessments, we need to understand how the magma is coming out of the ground," Parcheta told NASA. "This is the first time we have been able to measure it directly, from the inside, to centimeter-scale accuracy."

VolcanoBot 1 spotted bulges on the rock wall, like the bulges seen on the surface of the fissure, but it also discovered something unexpected: the fissure did not "pinch shut," according to NASA.

Parcheta and Parness plan to revisit the Kilauea fissure with a stronger robot - the 10-inch VolcanoBot 2 - complete with boosted motors and electrical communications for more data transfer to the surface.

"It has better mobility, stronger motors and smaller (5 inch, or 12 centimeter) wheels than the VolcanoBot 1," Parcheta told NASA. "We've decreased the amount of cords that come up to the surface when it's in a volcano."

VolcanoBot 2 will take its plunge in March.