Single photon LiDAR satellite has many significant advantages such as high repetition frequency, multi-beam measurement and small footprint measurement, which is an important development trend of laser measurement satellites in the future, compared with traditional linear system LiDAR satellite. At present, NASA has successfully developed a single photon laser measurement satellite Icesat-2 on the basis of SIMPL and MABLE airborne single-photon LiDAR, which is widely used in land, polar, vegetation, ocean and other fields, and will develop a thousand beams LIST in the future. Based on the investigation of airborne equipment and satellites of single photon LiDAR, this paper summarizes the key technologies, characteristics and development status of single photon measurement satellites, including single photon detector technology, LiDAR pointing determination technology, LiDAR beam steering technology, range gate prediction technology, single photon point cloud data processing technology, etc., which provides a reference for the subsequent design of single photon laser measurement satellites.