The primary purpose of satellite construction at University of Aalborg is to give the students engineering experience beyond what is normally achieved within a master's degree program.

The project is funded mainly by Aalborg University and by Danish Maritime Safety Administration (DaMSA ), along with other sponsors.

[3] The purpose of the satellite project was to find out if it was possible to receive Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from a 1U CubeSat.

The images recorded by the satellite were later transmitted to the ground station located at Aalborg University, from which they were made accessible for the general public.

9,000 AIS messages were received on a daily basis and downloaded to the mission control center (MCC), located in Aalborg, Denmark.

During the previous 24 hours, battery voltage was decreasing, and temperature readings indicated that AAUSat-3 was steady pointing the side without solar cells towards the Sun.

The situation was discussed and analyzed during the day, and it was decided to instruct AAUSat-3 on all upcoming passes to switch off beacon mode because it was using power.

The requested beacon also showed a high number of reboots, possibly due to low battery voltage.

During four passes (500 minutes), the students analyzed the situation and inspected the C source for the EPS server, and a solution was found.

New uploaded algorithms showed reception of approximately 8,000 messages per hour and real-time performance, which meant that decoding took less time than sampling and was carried out in parallel.

[3] 1 October 2014: The project at AAU declared the end of the AAUSat-3 mission due to battery problems (continuous decline in power production).