HIPPARCOS is now well settled on its 10h40m eccentric orbit and the data is received by three telemetry stations that are also transmitting commands: Odenwald (F.R.G.), Perth (Australia) and Goldstone (California). Although during about 80 to 90% of the time, data are recovered, in practice only the observations made from higher than the outer Van Allen belt are usable. Sometimes even at that height, on-board attitude determination does not converge due to the noise that covers the star mapper signal. Finally, about between 55 and 65% of the mission time is usable for reduction. The actual routine data recovery started on November 27, 1989.