Orbit maneuvers can cause satellite orbital anomalies and are one of the key concerns of the space situational awareness. A method to detect historical orbital maneuvers from satellite TLE(two line element) data was proposed. By analyzing the prediction errors, the abnormal cataloging values of the selected orbital parameter were detected, and then the corresponding historical maneuvering information was obtained. Firstly, a large number of sample data of prediction errors were obtained from the historical TLE data, and the probability distribution model of the prediction errors expressed by the Gaussian mixture model was fitted from these sample data by the EM(expectation maximization) algorithm. Then, based on the fitted distribution model, the threshold of detecting abnormal cataloging values of orbital parameter through prediction errors was determined. Finally, taking into account the relationship between orbital maneuvers and abnormal cataloging values of the orbital parameter, the method to detect orbital maneuver from the cataloging sequence of the orbital parameter was determined. The results of maneuver detection on typical active satellites show that the proposed method can detect historical maneuvers accurately while maintaining a low false detection rate.