This payload, named after characters in Astrid Lindgren's books (the idea came from a Russian scientist [1]), was developed by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna.
However, the satellite was operated until September 27, serving as a testbed for various software algorithms and store-and-forward communications.
Astrid-2 was Sweden's second microsatellite and it was piggybacked with Nadezhda 5, a Russian navigation satellite on December 10, 1998, on a Kosmos-3M rocket from Plesetsk in Russia.
[2][3] Its payload, built by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna and Uppsala and the Royal Institute of Technology (Alfven Laboratory) in Stockholm, was EMMA (Electrical and Magnetic field Monitoring of the Aurora), LINDA (Langmuir INterferometer and Density experiment for Astrid-2), MEDUSA (Miniaturized Electrostatic DUal-tophat Spherical Analyzer) and PIA (Photometers for Imaging the Aurora).
It was used to explore the electric and magnetic fields in the upper ionosphere and to measure neutral and charged particles and electron density.