20th anniversary of the MAGION 5 launch

August 29, 2016 is the day of  20th anniversary of the MAGION 5 launch (29.08 1996 from Plesetsk Cosmodrome) 

 MAGION 5 was intended for research ionosphere and magnetosphere of the Earth and was the culmination of the MAGION satellites series designed and developed in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics by team of scientists and engineers under the direction of  Ing. Pavel Triska, CSc. MAGION 5 was launched together with its parent spacecraft INTERBALL 2 on 29 August 1996 to the elliptical orbit with an apogee of 19196 km. After activating on orbit the MAGION 5 showed a fault in the system of solar cells and communication with satellite soon ceased. From the analysis of the fault on the backup system was found that there is a theoretical possibility of re-activation of the satellite. It was therefore prepared a number of telemetry commands that are periodically transmitted to the satellite from the ground control telemetry station in Panska Ves. After twenty months the team managed MAGION 5 successfully reactivate. The status of devices on board was very good and satellite was soon after recovery put into full operation. During the mission 1500 hours of recordings analog telemetry and 41 gigabytes of digital data were acquired. The last contact with the satellite happened on 2 July 2002.