The invention discloses an autonomous orbit maintaining method of a satellite based on increment on-line estimation. The autonomous orbit maintaining method comprises the following steps of S1, acquiring six average orbit instantaneous elements of a satellite orbit; S2, compared with a referring semi-major axis, when an average semi-major axis is attenuated to a certain threshold, placing an orbitcontrol allowing mark; S3, if an orbit mean anomaly of at current moment indicates that the situation that the satellite is located at a far point away from the orbit, entering the orbit keeping control; S4, if in the first control cycle of the orbit keeping control, according to the attenuate degree of the current orbit average semi-major axis, performing calculating to obtain the required increment of the semi-major axis; adopting orbit control increment which can be updated on-line to calculate the jet duration of the orbit control, if not in the first control cycle of the orbit keeping control, judging whether the jet duration of the current orbit control achieves the jet duration of the orbit control or not, and if not, continuing performing jetting, or else, placing an orbit controlfinishing mark, and exiting the orbit control; and S5, calculating deviation between the change quantity of a target semi-major axis and the actual variation of the semi-major axis, and changing theorbit control increment through an update rule of the orbit control increment.