Since optical images can intuitively describe the details of objects and get the rich level information of the scene, the optical imaging system has become one of the key earth observing systems. The higher the resolution of the space optical telescope system is, the more information can be got from ground object and the greater the value of the system is. The system resolution depends mainly on the aperture of the telescopes according to the Rayleigh criterion. While for the traditional refraction and reflection optical systems, increasing the aperture encountered several tech-nical bottlenecks such as the rapidly increasing weight, tight optical tolerances, limits packaging and deploying. Un-der the existing carrying capacities, it is more difficult to launch large reflection telescope than 10 meters even with the best current lightweight mirror designs. To solve these problems, a new lightweight microstructure membrane im-aging technology was proposed. This technology uses surface microstructure on flat thin film to modulate light waves subverted the traditional imaging methods based on Snell principle. The figure tolerance on the thin film with uniform thickness can be greatly reduced than the mirror and the weight could be very light. So the membrane lenses are easy to be packed and deployed. Meanwhile, the microstructure can be quickly manufactured by the nano pro-cessing technology, reducing the manufacturing time and costs. In summary, membrane telescope has the highly potentials to achieve large diameter space-based telescope more than 20 meters. At present, the team of the Mem-brane Optical Imager Real-time Exploitation (MOIRE) program supported by the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is the leader at this field. They have got stage results in acquisition of large aperture and homogeneous space optical film materials, fabrication of 5 meters membrane optical elements, development and experimental verification of ground prototype, etc.Through the research and analysis of related technologies at home and abroad, this paper reviewed the advances of the membrane telescopes and focused on membrane material, microstructure type and optical system design. The implementation of membrane telescopes involves many interdisciplinary disciplines such as materials, space envi-ronment engineering, nanofabrication technology, precision machinery, binary optics, and so on. As can be expected, with the research of membrane imaging technology in depth, many new key technologies and difficulties will gush out. Therefore, microstructure membrane telescope has a wide application prospects, at the same time meets new theoretical and technical challenges.