SAN FRANCISCO — PRIVATE track:<t1.000> The March 20 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano triggered a complex chain of events designed to assist NASA in gathering detailed data on the heat and volume of volcanic lava flows. It also demonstrated the merit of an autonomous system designed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient...