MAGION satellites

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MAGION spacecraft

As a part of Interkosmos space program, small satellite called MAGION-1 was developed in the middle of seventieth by Czechoslovakia (currently kept by the Czech Republic). It was launched into the orbit as a part of Soviet unmanned mission Interkosmos-18 on October 24, 1978. The purpose of the mission was to investigate the magnetosphere (MAG) and ionosphere (ION). The satellite and the followers are designed to measure space plasma parameters by a satellite/subsatellite pair simultaneously not far from each other.


MAGION 1 launched on October 24, 1978: weight 15kg and it worked for about 3 years. 
MAGION 2 launched on September 28, 1989: weight 52 kg as a part of the Active spacecraft (Interkosmos-24). 
MAGION 3 launched on December 18, 1991: weight 52 kg as a part of APEX spacecraft and was similar to MAGION 2. 
The following two subsatellites were designed as a part of Interball project. 
MAGION 4 launched on August 3, 1995: weight 59 kg and it was selected for the Tail Probe
MAGION 5 launched on August 29, 1996: weight 64 kg and it was selected for the Auroral Probe.

The Interball project is a multi national collaboration. It consists of 4 spacecraft: 2 main from the Prognoz series, and 2 subsatellites made in the Czech Republic. 

The main objective of the mission is to study mechanism how the solar wind energy is transferred into the magnetosphere, how it is stored there and subsequently how it dissipated in the tail and auroral regions, ionosphere and atmosphere during the substorm observation. A ground based observation provide simultaneous data to finish the whole picture.

You can find the data available in the CDAWeb (CDAWeb). And the MAGION data can be found under IT VDP (plasma flow detector - detector type: Faraday cups).

credit CDAWeb: first panel shows averaged magnetic field B [nT] from MFI (magnetic field) instrument Interball, and second panel shows Total antisunward ion flux Fi from VDP (Interball/Magion-4 tail probe) 
Found treasure in Czech side Wikipedia: Magion 1 test example, from the table

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