High-resolution space observation is of great importance for scientific and military use. To get higher resolution, a largerimaging aperture is highly required. For example, to obtain one-meter ground sampling distance (GSD) in visible bandon geostationary orbit (GEO), the pupil diameter of space telescope is around 25 meters. Trying to fabricate and launchso large monolithic mirror will meet many unconquerable obstacles. A feasible scheme is using sparse aperture imagingtechnique based on small satellites formation. This paper is focused on a sparse aperture telescope consisting of smallsub-telescopes to form a Fizeau imaging interferometer. Each sub-telecope is based on a small satellite. Imagingperformance of an annular structure consisting of 25 sub-apertures is evaluated by simulation. The influence of phasingerror (including piston and tip/tilt) of subapertures on image quality is evaluated. The co-phasing error budget of sparseaperture telescope dependent on field of view is also analyzed. A co-phasing error detection and correction method basedon wavefront sensorless adaptive optics (WSLAO) is proposed at last.
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