In order to realize the optical characteristics calculation of space targets with complex shape,an optical characteristics calculating method for space targets was presented based on the general idea of surface mesh-creation.The mathematical models of standard geometries for targets,mesh-creation methods,visibility of the target,and the luminance calculation were given.The software calculating optical characteristics of space targets was designed and compiled.For several satellite targets,optical characteristics calculations were conducted with this method,and the results were compared with those of analytic method and experiments.It is showed that the mesh-creation method is better than the analytic method in precision,and the errors are less than one apparent magnitude compared with experimental results,so this method can be applied in practice.