Electric propulsion pioneer Morpheus Space has unveiled an updated and enhanced version of its JOURNEY mission tracking and analytics platform.
Designed for its growing base of SmallSat customers and large-scale customers alike, the upgraded JOURNEY platform features an expanded Ground Station& Target Analytics package that offers users more precise tracking and communication with individual satellites and advanced satellite constellations.
“By providing deeper insights into ground station and target data, we enable satellite operators to make better-informed decisions, which ultimately leads to reduced operational risks, cost savings, and improved mission performance,” explained Morpheus Space’s President Kevin Lausten in an email to The Debrief.
The announcement follows Morpheus Space’s unveiling of its first-ever mass production facility, designed to dramatically increase the company’s mission capabilities and enhance the user experience.
JOURNEY Offers Dramatic Improvements in Mission Tracking Data
After starting as an R&D company, Morpheus Space entered the satellite propulsion and operations market in 2018. The Debrief previously covered the announcement of the company’s GO-2 propulsion technology, which uses liquid metal to maneuver satellites in space. According to the company’s CEO, Daniel Bock, that technological breakthrough uses field emission electric propulsion (FEEP) to dramatically improve efficiency and operational lifespan compared to the more commonly used ion propulsion technology.
“This self-contained, plug-and-play, electric propulsion system is one of the most capable, efficient, and innovative solutions for mobility in space,” Bock told The Debrief.
Now, the company says it is stepping up the ground station and tracking capabilities by releasing this enhanced version of JOURNEY.
In a statement emailed to The Debrief, Morpheus Space says this enhanced package offers “comprehensive insights” into a satellite’s overall mission performance, “enabling users to monitor satellite visibility, data transmission, and coverage with greater precision.”
Specifically, JOURNEY will provide its customers with unprecedented information about the satellite throughout its mission lifetime. These enhancements include more data to improve ground station connection and target collection windows, reduce satellite-to-ground station communication gaps, and better analytics on satellite-to-ground station data transfer rates. Offering improvements in these areas will allow current and future customers to refine mission strategies with a significant upgrade in mission-specific information, all in the hopes of reducing costs and increasing the value of each mission.
“The latest updates to JOURNEY are not just about enhancing technical capabilities—they’re about driving real value for our users,” Lausten told The Debrief.
For example, Morpheus says its enhanced JOURNEY package can seamlessly integrate its data and analytics with the company’s Advanced Mission Design (AMD) solution. According to the company’s email, AMD “enables high-fidelity simulations for a single satellite or across a constellation, providing detailed insights into areas such as orbital, subsystem, and ground asset analysis.” This system works hand in hand with the company’s Preliminary Mission Design (PMD) package, “which allows users to quickly simulate and match subsystems like propulsion, ADCS, power, and communications based on high-level mission inputs.”
In practical terms, this means that the new, enhanced JOURNEY package will offer its users all-new “per-event” metrics that can track each ground station contact and target collection event as they occur. An enhanced JOURNEY also offers its users a detailed breakdown of critical mission parameters like “look angle, look direction, pass direction, pass number, and data volume.”
Morpheus Space is Empowering Customers to Maximize Mission Returns
The enhanced package will also provide “per-ground asset” and aggregated metrics, data previously unavailable for most Small Sat customers. As a result, users can track things like total data volume, pass durations, gap times, and revisit rates. The company notes that these features are not just for single satellites but are available “across individual targets, ground stations, satellites, and entire constellations.”
By combining this data with specialized statistical tools like histograms for tracking and monitoring gap times and pass durations, JOURNEY users have the ability to identify detailed communication and operational trends across their satellite’s individual contacts and data collections, resulting in a much clearer understanding of their mission’s performance.
“The central goal of this update is to enable users to understand and optimize metrics around ground station contacts and target collects,” Morpheus Space told The Debrief. “With this release, users now have easy access to the key data needed to evaluate ground stations and target passes.”
“These advancements empower our customers to maximize the return on their missions,” Lausten added, “setting them up for success in increasingly complex environments.”
Customers interested in exploring the benefits of the enhanced JOURNEY package for individual, small-scale satellite missions, or large-scale satellite constellation missions can contact Morpheus Space directly at https://www.morpheus.space/journey.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.