The fifth satellite in the Meteor-3 series was launched on August 15, 1991. Meteor-3-5 was built and launched by the Soviet Union (now Russia), and carried five Soviet-built meteorological instruments, as well as NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer. The main objectives were to support weather forecasting and to measure the distribution of atmospheric ozone.

The satellite was placed into a 1200 km orbit with an 82.5-degree inclination. The orbit was not Sun-synchronous; rather it precessed with a period of 212 days. Because of the precession of the orbit, the local equator crossing time changed with the same period. During two periods within this cycle, instruments were close to the terminator, which made ozone retrievals difficult. Meteor‑3‑5 was operational from 1991 to 2002.