To screen the high reliability and stability devices from the scientific grade area detectors for the aerospace application, the environmental stress screening tests such as temperature cycling, random vibration, and burn-in are performed on the space-borne area charge coupled device (CCD). A system for area CCD image acquisition is designed, and the electro-optical parameters of a CCD are tested before and after screening based on the segmented illumination light source and the continuous tunable monochromatic light source. The differences of dark currents, photo response non-uniformity, quantum efficiencies, linearity errors, and other parameters of the area CCD before and after the environmental reliability tests are compared, the environmental adaptability of the area CCD is analyzed, and thus the quality defects and the early failures are eliminated. Subsequently, the detectors with an optimal performance are extracted from the participating area CCD and used in the space-borne directional polarimetric camera for atmospheric remote sensing observation. The experimental results show that the maximum change of quantum efficiency between pre- and post-screening for the ultimate optimal detector is -2.56%, the photo response non-uniformity is smaller than 3%, the linearity error is smaller than 1%, and the dark current is 889.22 electron·(pixel·s ^-1) ^-1 after screening. These research results provide significant reference data for the standardization establishment of low-level CCD screening methods and performance assessment techniques in aerospace field.