It is Denmark's first satellite, named after Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851), a Danish physicist and professor at the University of Copenhagen, who discovered electromagnetism in 1820.

[1] The instrumentation consisted of two magnetometers (proton precession and fluxgate), a star imager for attitude determination, a solid-state charged particle detector package, and a GPS receiver.

The science data obtained during the planned one-year mission will be used to derive an updated model of the geomagnetic field and its secular variation and to study the magnetospheric field-aligned currents and their relationship to ionospheric and solar wind conditions.

The results have been published in several prominent scientific journals, and printed on the cover pages of Geophysical Research Letters,[6] Nature,[7] and Eos.

After more than twenty years in orbit, the Ørsted satellite is still operational (as of 2023), and continues to downlink accurate measurements of the Earth's magnetic field.