On July 29, Space Systems Command awarded SpaceX two task orders covering 18 Falcon 9 missions and worth $1.6 billion, all flying from Vandenberg Space Force Base and all expected to be complete by the end of 2027. The orders fall under Lane 1 of National Security Space Launch Phase 3 and carry communications and targeting satellites for the Space-Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio. “We have set an unprecedented two-month acquisition timeline under the Phase 3 Lane 1 contract from requirement identification to award,” said Col. Eric Zarybnisky, the acting Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Space Access. The officer who runs the Space Force’s launch portfolio takes the MilSat Symposium stage at Silicon Valley Space Week in October.
Zarybnisky has held Space Access in an acting capacity since January 2026, working from Patrick Space Force Base in Florida. The portfolio covers launch delivery, ranges and sustainment. It is one of nine the Space Force created when it restructured its procurement enterprise this summer, and Air Force Secretary Troy Meink has said probably 90 to 92 percent of contracting authority now sits with executives like Zarybnisky. He held the predecessor job, Program Executive Officer for Assured Access to Space, from June 2025. Much of his career has been at the National Reconnaissance Office, including four launch assignments there: Chief of Launch Vehicle Analysis from 2005, Chief Engineer for Launch Systems from 2007, Chief of the Space System Acquisitions and Launch Division from 2020, and Senior Materiel Leader in the Office of Space Launch from 2023 to 2025. He commanded the 4th Space Launch Squadron at Vandenberg from 2015 to 2017. His degrees are a bachelor of science in operations research and economics from the Air Force Academy, and a master of science and a doctorate in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Senate confirmed his appointment to brigadier general on July 16, one of seven Space Force colonels confirmed that day. Space Force releases still identified him as a colonel through the end of July, and the conference program lists him at the higher rank.
In July the Space Force raised the Lane 1 contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion, after its estimate of the missions to be ordered over five years grew from between 30 and 60 to roughly 170. The provider list grew too. Lane 1 added Impulse Space and Relativity Federal in July, each on a $5 million task order for an initial capabilities assessment and tailored mission assurance work, bringing the field to seven alongside Blue Origin, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Rocket Lab and Stoke Space. Rockets are only one of the three constraints Zarybnisky has named. “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,” he said in a Space Systems Command interview last December.
Zarybnisky’s fireside interview runs Thursday, October 29, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. in the Hahn Auditorium at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The agenda lists no interviewer and gives the session no description. At 9:30 a.m. the room turns to “Golden Dome: Accelerating Industrial Capability on a 2028 Clock,” moderated by Phil Carrai, President of the Space, Training and Cyber Division at Kratos, which the program introduces by asking whether the twelve companies holding contracts to build missile interceptors in space can deliver by 2028. A day earlier Col. Timothy Trimailo, Director of the Commercial Space Office at Space Systems Command, takes the symposium stage twice.
Silicon Valley Space Week runs Tuesday, October 27 through Thursday, October 29 at the Computer History Museum, with Satellite Innovation across the first two days and the MilSat Symposium across the last two. Zarybnisky’s session opens the closing day. The 18 Falcon 9 missions his portfolio ordered in July are expected to fly by the end of 2027.
