Space Astrometry and Catalog Services

Hipparcos S.r.l. is an Italian company specializing in precision astrometry data products and services, named after the ESA Hipparcos satellite mission (1989–1993) that produced the definitive catalog of 118,218 star positions with milliarcsecond precision. The company provides access to, processing of, and value-added products derived from the Hipparcos and Tycho-2 star catalogs and the successor Gaia mission data releases.

Precision star catalogs are foundational to multiple space technology applications: star tracker attitude determination systems use stellar position databases to identify stars and compute spacecraft attitude; telescope pointing and calibration requires precise knowledge of guide star positions; and astrometric surveys use catalog data as reference frames for measuring asteroid orbits, pulsar timing, and gravitational wave source localization.

Hipparcos S.r.l. provides processed stellar data, coordinate transformation services, and catalog matching algorithms for integration into star tracker firmware and telescope control systems. The availability of ESA’s Gaia Data Release 3 (2022) — with 1.5 billion star positions at microarcsecond precision — has created new demand for companies that can transform raw Gaia data into operational catalogs suitable for satellite attitude determination hardware.