Garrett Lee Skrobot in KSC’s Launch Services Program
Bio portrait for Garrett Skrobot, Flight Projects Office, Launch Services Program
Garrett Lee Skrobot currently is a senior mission manager and leads the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites missions, or ELaNa, in the Flight Projects Office within the Launch Services Program (LSP) at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Beginning his career with NASA in 2000, Skrobot worked as an electrical system engineer supporting EOS, the Earth Observing System mission; GOES, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite mission; and TDRS, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Skrobot then became a systems integration engineer and primarily worked on small and secondary payload missions, including Munin, ChipSat and the Kodiak Star.
In 2003, Skrobot was promoted to mission manager in the Flight Projects Office. Over the past 12 years, Skrobot has worked as the mission manager for ST-5, THEMIS, STSS DEMO, NuSTAR, and now InSight and MarCO, the first CubeSat to Mars. During this time, Skrobot also has been the LSP point of contact for small secondary payloads.
In 2007, LSP management asked Skrobot to evaluate how CubeSats and their dispensers could be integrated onto NASA launch vehicles. Skrobot welcomed the challenge and created the ELaNa mission concept. ELaNa is the conduit NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative uses to launch their selected CubeSats. To date, there have been nine ELaNa missions with 38 CubeSats launched on five different launch vehicles.
Before coming to NASA in 2000, Skrobot spent 10 years as a vehicle system engineer with General Dynamics on the Atlas/Centaur Program. He worked on various electrical systems on the Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle, including payload integration and ground systems which gave him hands-on launch vehicle experience.
He received his degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee in 1988. Skrobot also holds a Master of Space Science from the Florida Institute of Technology.
September 2015