Logan was mission control to a major space conference for decades. Now, the event is leaving.

Logan • Turns out, a space conference needs more space — not out there in the cosmos, but right here in Utah. The Small Satellite Conference , hosted in Logan for nearly four decades, will be moving to Salt Lake City next year. The event’s chair, Pat Patterson, announced the change during Monday’s conference, saying the event has outgrown the northern Utah city.

The conference, commonly referred to as the SmallSat, is held each August and attracts thousands of engineers, rocket scientists, academics and inventors from around the world. Attendance has swelled since the first conference, held in 1987, when only 45 people joined, Patterson said. This year, he estimates there are 3,700 to 3,800 attendees, stressing a city with only about a thousand hotel rooms.

“I just absolutely love it here,” Patterson said. “But it’s time to do what’s best for the industry, and that is to move to a location with a better infrastructure.” That location will be the Salt Palace Convention Center, where Patterson said the conference can take place under one roof, is walking distance from numerous hotels, and is near the airport.

The conference was started by two Utah State University professors who wanted to provide a place for university students to practice creating satellites at a time when doing so was extremely expensive. As the years went by, a microelectronic boom led to satellites becoming physically smaller and easier to create, completely changing the satellite indust.