After receiving his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2011, Jack Elston founded Black Swift Technologies (BST) in Boulder, CO. As stated in Jack’s bio, his graduate research was “based on work that developed a complex meshed network, unmanned aircraft system, and control algorithms for in situ sampling of tornadic supercell thunderstorms.” This then became the roots of BTS, a company that builds bespoke drones for scientific research conducted in extreme environments.

Early on at BTS, Jack and his team became the first to ever intercept a tornadic supercell thunderstorm with a drone. They flew over 72 different missions, facing conditions with wind speeds reaching 100mph, without ever losing a single drone. BTS designs modular drones that can be custom configured to meet the specific needs of a mission. A drone being used to study the extreme winds of a storm needs a different configuration and payload array than a drone sampling volcanic gasses. In 2017, BTS caught the attention of a NASA project looking to study volcanoes.

In 2010, ash fall from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland shut down air travel throughout Europe for nearly a week. The lingering ash cloud led to the cancellation of 95,000 flights and airlines accruing more than $1.7 billion in losses. NASA was tasked with studying how these clouds function to improve air traffic management. NASA contracted BTS for $124,849 to run a study on volcanic ash fall with the SuperSwift XT drone. “The SuperSwift XT will be designed to collect data in harsh environments and will enhance the performance and utility of NASA’s Airborne Science fleet,” explained Jack.

With the success of their first collaboration, NASA returned to BTS to request a new drone for volcanic studies. BTS stepped up to the plate with the development of the Black Swift S2 UAS. As explained on the BTS website, “The Black Swift S2 is a UAS purpose-built for flying scientific payloads in demanding atmospheric environments (high-altitude, corrosive particulates, and strong turbulence). The Black Swift S2 offers the additional benefits of having a larger payload capacity than other vehicles while also providing longer endurance, higher ceiling, and greater range than competitive unmanned aircraft. This rugged airframe is capable of autonomous launch, flight, and landing in difficult mountainous regions.”

For the S2 UAS project, NASA sent BTS to the Makushin volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in the fall of 2021. The drone was able to autonomously, and BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line Of Sight) gather atmospheric data that signal changes in volcanic activity. With this data, NASA can better understand when a volcano may erupt. This information is vital in providing emergency plans and rerouting air traffic. For Jack, every opportunity BTS has to work with agencies like NASA is an opportunity to further develop drone technologies. “Our goal is to continue to push the capabilities of UASs to provide valuable insight into natural phenomena,” he said. “This deployment demonstrated some state-of-the-art automation technologies we think will help greatly simplify what are now very difficult UAS operations. One of the most exciting results was to see our custom autopilot system determine when conditions had become too dangerous and turn back.” For NASA, they hope to deploy S2 UAS at other volcanoes around the world.