Above: The team with the RAAVEN uncrewed aerial system. Ananth is third from left.
Header Image: RAAVEN in flight with Mt. Kilauea erupting in the distance.

Dhruva Ananth (AeroEngr MS’26) stares across a field of black rocks at an epic force of nature. Hawaiʻi’s Mt. Kilauea is erupting, throwing massive amounts of ash high into the atmosphere and a river of lava down its sides.

Ananth is in Hawaiʻi as a University of Colorado Boulder partner on a research project that reaches all the way to the planet Venus.

Later this year, Rocket Lab Inc. intends to launch the first privately funded mission to the planet, and Ananth is part of a team testing an important instrument that will measure Venus’s sulfuric acid-rich atmosphere.

Earth to Venus

“Volcanic plumes are one of the closest analogs we can access on Earth for some aspects of those atmospheric conditions. A version of this payload is intended to collect data in Venus’ atmosphere, including measurements related to particles and possible organic content of it and this preliminary work is to test and verify it can do what it’s supposed to,” said Ananth, who finished his master’s in aerospace engineering sciences at CU Boulder in May and will be completing a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

As the ash plumes from Mt. Kilauea are airborne, the instrument testing must be as well. 

The team is using CU Boulder’s RAAVEN uncrewed aerial system to conduct flights downwind of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. 

To get there, the fixed wing drones were disassembled and stored in well-padded Pelican cases as checked luggage. The one-of-a-kind, very expensive Venus instrument flew carry-on.

“There are certain things you can’t let an airline lose,” Ananth said.

Real Time Data

The drones have seen extensive use studying tornadic thunderstorms, and Ananth’s work has played a key role in expanding their capabilities to provide real-time, air-to-ground data streams.

“I initially started writing the code to see whether we could improve the real-time data flow,” Ananth said. “With thunderstorm research flights, the data is stored on board and processed after landing, which worked because you already have weather radar telling you where to fly. For the flights in Hawaiʻi, we needed real-time data to understand where the relevant plume or particle concentrations were during flight,” Ananth said.

One of the biggest obstacles was the sheer volume of data being collected and transmitted in real time. “It required adding a second radio to the RAAVEN and I still was pushing the throughput as high as it would go,” he said. “We had a lot of bottlenecks, but one of the best feelings is when people like something you’ve developed and they actually want to use it.”

They conducted multiple lengthy test flights – the RAAVEN can stay airborne for up to 90 minutes at a time – and are now doing post-mission analysis of the instrument’s performance.

Mission Analysis

The ultimate goal of the instrument and larger Venus probe is to determine if there is organic material in the planet’s atmosphere that could indicate life on the planet. 

“This is a really exciting project and I’m very humbled for the opportunity to be at CU Boulder and to a part of it,” Ananth said.

In addition to CU Boulder, partners on the instrument portion of the probe includes Longmont-based Droplet Measurement Technologies Inc., MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology, which is leading the overall effort.

Map of the Big Island showing the launch location and Mt. Kilauea.

Hiking on volcanic rock bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.