Abstract: According to analyze the imaging mechanism of high-resolution satellite imagery, a solution of exterior orientation parameters based on quaternion differential equation is presented. In this solution the unit quaternion is used to describe the attitude of the image, and then the rigorous geometric model based on quaternion differential equation is build. In order to solve this rigorous geometric model, three independent parameters are introduced to this solution. So that, it is not should to solve the unknown quaternion directly, but these three independent parameters, and the unknown number keeps the same as the existed method in photogrammetry. In addition, Tikhonov regularization theory is also use to solve the rigorous geometric model. Experimental results indicate that this solution, which can avoid computation of trigonometric functions completely, is right, stable and adaptive, and the orientation precision can be improved when these three independent parameters are used.