This image may not be used to state or imply ESA endorsement of any company or product Hipparcos astrometry satellite under test. Engineers testing th

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This image may not be used to state or imply ESA endorsement of any company or product Hipparcos astrometry satellite under test. Engineers testing the Hipparcos satellite at Toulouse in late 1987. Hipparcos (High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite) was launched on 8 August 1989, but was stranded in geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) by a booster failure. Despite this, the satellite has managed to measure the parallax, proper motion and position of over 120,000 stars to an accuracy of 0. 002 arcseconds, about 20 times better than Earth-bound observations.

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Keywords: astrometry, astronomical, astronomy, astrophysics, european, hipparco, hipparcos, parallax, satellite, stellar, testing