Hipparcos S.r.l.

Hipparcos S.r.l. is an Italian hi-tech company founded in spring 2022 in Torino, spun out of EICAS Automazione S.p.A., a firm with roots in autonomous attitude determination dating back to 1984, including two decades of cooperation on ESA's original Hipparcos astrometry mission (1987-1994) and the SAC-C and AST/MHS2 spacecraft attitude programs developed with Alenia Spazio and EADS Sodern.

The company designs and commercializes Autonomous Attitude Determination Systems (AADS) and Attitude Determination and Control Systems (ADCS/AOCS) purpose-built for the smallsat market, using proprietary multicamera star-tracker architectures with onboard image processing to determine spacecraft attitude, angular rate, acceleration and its derivative without external references.

Hipparcos' flagship product, the ARGO 1.0 star tracker, reached TRL8 through an in-orbit demonstration on D-Orbit's ION SCV2 platform, launched January 2021 and validated through July 2022, confirming pattern recognition, tracking accuracy, straylight robustness and in-orbit calibration on-orbit. The company is now developing ARGO 2.0, a constellation-optimized redesign with reduced mass and power consumption.