A target staring adaptive attitude control method was designed, which could achieve staring at the target in the presence of the unknown target′s position and camera parameters. Based on the kinematic equation, the estimated parameters were extracted and linearized. A potential function with respect to unknown parameters was introduced to meet the demand for the rank of the parameter matrix. A self-updating principle of parameters was adopted to estimate the parameters on line, and accordingly, the adaptive control method was proposed. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory and Barbalat′s lemma, it was proved that the error between the target imaging position and the desired imaging position could asymptotically converge to zero. Simulation results reveal that the adaptive controller can effectively achieve staring observation for deep space targets with the uncertainties of the target position and the camera parameters.