EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Colonel Eric Zarybnisky is Program Executive Officer for Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Assured Access to Space. He is responsible for the acquisition, integration, development, production, operation, and sustainment of the $13.5B National Security Space Launch, Rocket System Launch, Launch and Test Range System, and Space Access and Servicing, Mobility, and Logistics programs.
Recently, Col. Zarybnisky sat down with SSC Public Affairs to talk about his current role and what’s ahead for AATS.
Q: You were the director of the Office of Space Launch (OSL) with the NRO – which has a different mission set than SSC. What kinds of things from that experience are you bringing to your new role here at SSC?
A: There are three experiences from the OSL and the NRO writ large that are important in my current role as the PEO for Assured Access to Space.
As the director of OSL, my job was to make sure that satellites were transported at the launch base, taken care of, and delivered to orbit successfully so that they could do their mission. That's a very clear similarity to what I do today: making sure that the SSC programs and other Space Force satellites can come to the launch base, launch into orbit, and go do their mission.
Something that I did in the in NRO was actually build satellites – the NRO has different kinds of missions and different satellites than what the SSC and other Space Force missions are doing. But in many ways, it's also very similar.
These are highly complex machines that have to be put together in very specific ways, typically in clean rooms and then transported again very carefully to be launched on top of a rocket to go into space. So, I definitely understand the importance of the mission and what my satellite customers are working through to get here.
I think one difference that I see between the NRO and my current role is the direct tie to operations day-to-day. There's an office inside the NRO called the NRO Operations Squadron. They worked for me in the Office of Space Launch, and they directly interacted with the Satellite Control Network (SCN) to make sure that the spacecraft on the NRO side could do what they needed to do. So daily I had conversations with the team that was working with the ground stations for the NRO, which is not a feature of my role as PEO.
Q: The USSF has a huge impact on and benefits from the space industrial base and has been encouraging competition and innovation with the National Security Space Launch program, in particular the latest iteration, Phase 3, with its Lane 1 “on ramps” and Lane 2. What are some of the latest developments since Phase 3 was launched last year?
A: I think the most important development I've seen is the speed to orbit. As we look at some of our Phase 3 Lane 1 missions, we have been able to get from Request For Proposal (RFP) or contract award to launch in about six months. That is almost unheard of in the space launch industry, and these are for relatively complex missions. I think the most exciting thing is that we are proving that launch can become responsive to our satellite customers. When they're ready to go, we can make sure that there is a rocket ready for them as well.
The other part of the Lane 1 mission set that I'm excited about is the tiers of mission assurance.
So many of the missions we've done so far are Tier 0, so minimal government involvement on the mission assurance side. But we did actually award a Tier 3 mission this year, so that's going to be the highest level of mission assurance in Lane 1 and going to give us a lot of insight and an ability to make sure that mission is successful. Phase 3 Lane 2 missions will still have the full complement of government mission assurance.
I'd say what I'm most excited about there is just the wide breadth of customers that we're now seeing come into Lane 2 and how we're able to support multi-missions and singular missions going to a variety of orbits. We're able to capture a number of different orbital regimes and mission sets for the NRO and for SSC and Space Force missions across the board because we service all of those different customers.
Q: Launch tempos are increasing across the board. How is SSC looking to modernize its spaceports to not only handle the increased number of launches, but the improved launch and operational technologies available or required?
A: I think there's really two parts to that question. The first one is what most people think about when they think about the ranges, which are the radars, the telemetry dishes, the command transmitters for the flight termination systems - many of those things were built in the 70s or 80s even. We're modernizing those to make sure that they have modern waveforms, modern technologies, and the networks that that data is delivered to and then sent to either the customers or to the decision makers at the launch base. We're working through and modernizing all those systems.
However, this mission is somewhat unique in that you have to have firefighters. You have to have civil engineers. You have to have security forces to make the launch mission happen. The roads, the water supplies, the electricity are intrinsically important to the launch mission. So I'm partnering with the space launch deltas to make sure that we bring both sets of modernization together so that we can then meet the increase both in the commercial launch sector that we're seeing as well as the national security space launch sector.
Q: In addition to pivoting to lower-cost proliferated LEO (Low Earth Orbit) constellations, USSF also has been looking at potentially proliferating in other orbits, such as MEO (Medium Earth Orbit.) What are some of the challenges for placing various payloads in different orbits?
So, this is a good place to remember that this still is rocket science. It is something we have to remind folks.
We are still combining highly volatile chemicals and lighting them on fire and then what I like to tell folks is fighting gravity is still really hard because that's really what a rocket is there to do – fight gravity for the required 11 to 15 minutes required to get a satellite up and out of the Earth’s atmosphere and then on its way to its intended orbit.
The key to this question is how high you’re trying to get. LEO is relatively close to the Earth, and so you can put a lot of weight, a lot of mass into that lower orbit. When you start talking about Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) or Geosynchronous or Geostationary orbit (GEO) it becomes a real challenge in how you survive in space that long, with the upper stage.
The upper stages that are optimized for Low Earth Orbit aren’t in space for very long but when you’re going out to GEO and you’re in a six- or seven-hour coast, you have to make sure the electronics don’t freeze; the propellants don’t freeze; that you have equal thermal heating across the different parts of the rocket so the part that’s facing the sun doesn’t burn up and the other side doesn’t get too cold. There’s a lot more complexity that you have to think through as you go to these different orbits. And fundamentally, it’s all about the mass-to-orbit and a rocket that can get a certain amount of weight to LEO is going to get much less to GEO because you’re fighting Earth’s gravity for so much longer.
Q: One of the drawbacks of legacy satellites is that they have a finite fuel supply, which they use to maintain their orbits and maneuver in the event of space debris. What is SSC looking at in terms of space mobility, including refueling satellites and potentially being able to move defunct satellites out of orbit?
A: For refueling, I like to break this down into High Delta V (change in velocity) and Low Delta V missions. High Delta V is typically going to be done with satellites that have hydrazine as their primary fuel; some of these have what’s called bi-propellant, so they have both hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. These are highly volatile chemicals and they give you a lot of thrust.
Low Delta V is going to be electric propulsion. The way we like to describe the Low Delta V electric propulsion is essentially the weight of a piece of paper, and if you do that over time, you can actually move something, but it’s not the real kick that you get from a hydrazine solution that is really moving something more quickly.
On the High Delta V side, we have a demonstration coming up in the next couple of years with a commercial company. What I’ve been charged to do by the service is to follow along with the commercial industry – see where they’re headed and then see how the Space Force can leverage what the commercial industry brings to bear.
Now, when you talk about defunct satellites, either moving them out of orbit or bringing them back into Earth’s orbit – or in the case of GEO, we actually move them out further -- then we would typically do that with a Low Delta V application, typically with electric propulsion. We are working on another demo in the next couple of years to prove out that kind of technology and see if we can buy that as a service.
And I think the last one's an important question of why would you need to do that? Well, if we don't have enough fuel on the satellite to move it out to a higher orbit, that slot in space becomes unusable. You don't want to be too close to another satellite. The intent for these Low Delta V missions is to let the satellite do its operational mission as long as it can with the fuel it has on board. It can use up all of that fuel. And then we can use one of the Low Delta V solutions to then move it again into a higher orbit or bring it back into the earth so that it gets out of the way and the next generation satellite system can use that slot in orbit.
Q: There’s been a lot of news coverage about SSC’s new System Deltas. Tell us a little about why these System Deltas are so important, and how they’re going to make SSC more efficient and get capabilities on orbit faster.
Colonel Ryan Hiserote is the SYD 80 commander and the importance of the stand up of the System Deltas is the delineation of the roles for program executive officer and the role for a System Delta commander. Ryan is charged with kind of the down-and-in leadership of the programs; he's going to make sure that the people are taken care of. He's going to make sure that the machinery of the programs is going on day-to-day and that they're being successful in what they need to do day-in and day-out to make this mission happen.
As the Program Executive Officer, my role is much more up-and-out communication. I spend a lot of time on the road going to Capitol Hill, going to the Pentagon, talking to the staffs there to make sure that the Assured Access to Space Mission is understood, that we can explain to Congress how we're spending hard-earned tax taxpayer dollars to get capabilities on orbit and that our national leaders truly understand the launch mission. So that’s really a symbiotic relationship between the System Delta and the PEO. And I and my staff try to make sure that we're both executing the day-to-day mission as well as articulating the high-level strategic and long-term strategy for launch.
The most important message is how we’re spending taxpayer dollars. At the end of the day, the taxpayers have entrusted me with a significant amount of money to deliver these satellites to orbit, and it’s important that we are transparent with the people at the Pentagon as well as the Office of Management and Budget and Capitol Hill and explain what we’re doing with those dollars.
It’s relatively simple to explain most of it – we’re buying rockets, we’re putting satellites on orbit, but there are definitely details that we need to talk to them about what exactly we’re doing, why I made some of the decisions I made, why some of the other individuals in the program office made certain decisions. The hard conversation I’ve had to have is when there are technical failures – we have had issues with rockets and going to Capitol Hill and explaining why that happened and how the very rigorous processes that we go through to make sure we’re ready to launch missed something. It’s a hard thing to look a staffer or really anyone in the eye and say we missed something, and the Nation does not have that capability on orbit today because of something we missed.
Q: What influenced your decision to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy and then pursue a career the Air Force, NRO and Space Force?
I actually visited all three main service academies – Army, Navy and Air Force. A couple of things drew me toward the Air Force Academy – number one, it was closer to home. I grew up out in Idaho, so the 11-hour drive from Colorado Springs was much easier than Annapolis or West Point. The other thing is, early in my career, I did want to be a pilot. I did spend some time in pilot training and unfortunately, I was not able to continue as a pilot due to some medical issues, so I pivoted to become a mathematician.
So I was a mathematician in the Air Force for a number of years – that’s actually what brought me into the NRO. And then once I was in the NRO, I did some time in launch, building spacecraft, and then I’m actually a relatively recent transition to the Space Force, having come over in August of 2024, specifically to take this job, to stay in launch and do the great things we get to do in Assured Access to Space.
Most mathematicians would not say that I am a mathematician because I try to use math to solve real-world problems. What I love about it is that I can solve real problems that are very complex and complicated problems. I can even explain it to the 3rd and 4th graders. One of the problems I solved in my doctorate was called facility location – I was solving it for where do we put depots and inventory downrange for CENTCOM. But to a third grader, it’s “Where should the local pizza place go, and how do they get pizzas to their customers quickly?”
It's the same problem that people can understand and connect to that idea, and you tell them, “The same way you would think about that problem is exactly how I thought about the problem.”
It’s much broader, many more variables, many more things to think about but at its core, it's the same challenges we see day in, day out in our daily lives.
Q: What would you tell a young person who’s trying to decide on a career about the kinds of opportunities available in the U.S. Space Force?
I had exactly this conversation at the rental car return on Friday night. It was a gentleman who was checking in my car and I handed him my ID. He said “You're in the Space Force! I didn’t know what the Space Force is! What do you do?” And I explained to him that we do GPS – the way you get from Point A to Point B in your car is through the satellites that the Space Force flies, and I talked to him a little bit about the secure communications and the satellites that we have to make sure the President can talk to the troops and other parts of the national command staff, when and where he needs to. And then of course, I have to close with launch, because launching rockets is just one of the coolest things you can ever say you get to do, right?
My wife is an elementary school teacher. I love going into her classroom and talking about what it means to be a rocket scientist and sit on console and give the “You have permission to launch” call towards the end of the terminal count. Or show them the launch bolt for an Atlas rocket and talk to them about the technology that goes into a seemingly simple bolt, but if that bolt doesn’t work, we lose a mission and just how important all of the different parts and the people who make that mission happen are to the security of our Nation.
I think it’s important to know that I have a certain skill set – my skill set is not finance. My skill set is not building the prettiest PowerPoint charts. And it’s important that everybody knows that their piece of the puzzle is important. I can’t do my job of talking to Congress, talking to the (Joint Chiefs of) Staff without folks who are good at making sure my PowerPoint charts look the same and have nice graphics or the folks who bring together the financial story. It’s hugely important – everybody has a role to play in making this mission happen.
Q: What else would you like SSC’s stakeholders to know about aspects of launch, SSC, etc.?
One of the things I’ve tried to articulate in my time here is the customer relationship we have with our spacecraft programs. Spacecraft are highly exquisite, very complicated machines that we need to make sure get to orbit so they can do their mission for the warfighter. I’ve tried to instill in the organization a thought process that we are really serving the customer, which is the spacecraft program. We don’t launch rockets just because we want to launch a rocket. The purpose is to get that satellite to orbit.
The other part that’s very closely tied to this is all the things that have to come together for a launch. The rockets are important and that’s what everybody sees, but in order to launch a rocket and get a satellite on orbit, I really need three things to happen at the exact same time: I need a satellite that’s ready, a rocket that’s ready, and a range that’s ready. The safety systems have to be ready; we can’t have aircraft that are in the area or ships or anything else, and then we can launch a rocket. We have to have a good satellite, a good rocket and a good range.
Q: How many people does it take to launch a rocket?
That is a complicated answer – let’s take a Starlink mission. That’s into the dozens, maybe up to 100 folks that are going to work a Starlink launch. When you get into some of our complicated National Security Space Launch missions, that grows substantially, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Down at the SpaceX factory in Los Angeles, or the ULA factory near Huntsville, Alabama, or the Blue Origin factory here in Florida - those technicians whose jobs are to make sure the rockets are built correctly every single time are a huge part of that equation as well. If they over-torque a bolt or something is shaved just slightly incorrectly, even grinding away a weld - that can have major implications for our ability to launch. The day of launch gets a lot of press and a lot of the limelight, but it is such a technically complex mission that everyone along that value chain is important to make sure it's a success.
Col. Zarybnisky earned his commission from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2001 where he spent a semester on exchange to the U.S. Naval Academy. His previous assignments include Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training, launch vehicle engineering and analysis, satellite architecture analysis, command of a launch squadron, and graduate studies in Operations Research focusing on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle tasking, maintenance scheduling, and combinatorial optimization.
He also deployed to Southwest Asia supporting OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM for the U.S. Air Forces Central, U.S. Central Command. Prior to assuming his current position, Col. Zarybnisky was the Director, Office of Space Launch, National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, Virginia.
As the PEO for AATS, Col. Zarybnisky leads government and contractor personnel at Patrick SFB and Cape Canaveral SFS in Florida, as well as at Los Angeles AFB, California; Kirtland AFB, New Mexico; Hill AFB, Utah; and Peterson SFB, Colorado.