Space optical remote sensor has the characteristics of long development cycle and high cost. Before the launch of the satellite,the simulation experiment must be carried out in detail on the ground in order to ensure the performance of aerospace remote sensing imaging system. An aerospace remote sensing imaging HIL simulation system is constructed,which uses six degrees of freedom manipulator as its motion platform. Firstly,the coordinate systems were established and the coordinate system transformation parameters were obtained. Then the ephemeris data which were generated by STK (system Tool Kit) software were input to the control system after coordinate transformation. Lastly,according to the imaging principle of TDI CCD camera,the target’s simulation image was obtained along with the movement of the manipulator by push-broom scanning three-dimensional terrain sand table. The results of simulation test show that the correct and effective simulation coordinate systems can fast,stably,and real-time simulate the process of aerospace remote sensing imaging in this system. The circularities of 12 circular targets uniformly distributed in the simulation image are better than 0.95,which proves that the quality of simulation image is higher,and the simulation image of terrain sand table could meet the demand of remote sensing target detection and research on simulation recognition algorithm,which provides a reference for the research on space optical remote sensing imaging simulation system.