DOUG SINCLAIR PRESENTS THE SIF STANDARD AT SMALLSAT CONFERENCE

Logan, Utah, May 17, 2006 - Doug Sinclair, of SpaceQuest Canada, presented his paper on a new spacecraft interconnection standard at the 20th Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Utah. The SmallSat Conference is a professional conference attended by over 800 professionals and students active in the Small Satellite Community. This year's conference marked the 20th anniversary of the conference, and several regular attendees were honored with awards and lifetime complimentary registration. Industry professionals and students are invited to present papers on small satellite technology and missions at the conference. Many apply, but time constraints allow only a select few to be presented in the short four-day conference. A committee reviews the papers and selects those that will be presented.

Doug Sinclair's paper, "SIF - Yet Another Spacecraft Interconnection Standard" was chosen he presented it on Thursday. Standards was the theme of the 2005 SmallSat Conference, making the presentation of an operationally successful standard a wonderful segue into this year's conference. SIF was in the final stages of testing at the time of the 2005 conference and in the intervening year, SpaceQuest adopted the standard and successfully implemented it in a spacecraft now on orbit. The rapid development of this spacecraft and its operational success are a direct result of a successfully implemented standard - SIF.

Doug Sinclair and SpaceQuest have made SIF (Standard InterFace) an open standard. We hope that others in the small satellite community will adopt it as well, allowing a more ready compatibility between components manufactured by different companies and organizations. We believe such cooperation will be of benefit not only to commercial space enterprises, but to university and AMSAT programs as well.

Doug Sinclair's paper can be found here.

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