Dr. Pete Rustan is the founding member of ICS’ Advisory Board, a position created to provide ICS with technology planning, performance improvement, thought leadership and long-range strategic planning.
Dr Rustan, is a renown space and aerospace expert and the 2012 winner of the Aviation Week and Space Technology Lifetime Achievement Award. He has a long and distinguished career in public service both in the military and civilian sector.
Dr. Rustan became the Deputy Director for Mission Support (DDMS), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), on September 8, 2009, after previously serving as the NRO Director, Ground Enterprise Directorate (D/GED), and Director, Advanced Systems and Technology, for over five years.
Dr. Rustan served a 26 year career in the United States Air Force, where he managed several spacecraft programs that used advanced technologies and implemented a shorter time to market philosophy. He was the mission manager for the Clementine spacecraft, which mapped the surface of the Moon and obtained more than 1.8 million images using 11 spectral bands. Of scientific note, Clementine’s radar returns suggested the presence of ice at the Moon’s South Pole.
Dr. Rustan has published more than 40 scientific papers in the open literature in spacecraft design, digital signal processing, control system design, biomedical engineering, lightning physics and streamlined program management. He is a dedicated advocate for intelligence community integration, rapid prototyping and selecting the best value proposition to address intelligence needs. He is an AIAA Fellow and has received many national and international awards, including the Aviation Week and Space Technology Hall of Fame Laureate, the Disney Discovery Award for Technological Innovation, the National Space Club Astronautics Engineer Award, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and was featured by Space News in their Top 100 in Space 1989 – 2004.
On a personal note, late on the night of August 23, 1967, Rustan leapt from the shores of Communist Cuba into the dark waters of Guantánamo Bay, swimming one mile to the United States Naval Station and scaling over the Cactus Curtain to freedom. He later received B.S.E.E and M.S.E.E. degrees from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1969 and 1970 respectively. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida in 1979.