Aiming at the application requirements of laser communication and atmospheric short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectroscopy of low-orbit satellites, a design method for star short-wave infrared imagers is proposed. Since the anti-total dose radiation capacity of the low-orbit satellite system is required to be more than 20kRad (Si), the method first screened the InGaAs focal plane detector with a total dose radiation resistance of more than 20kRad (Si). Then the aerospace-level components were used to design the corresponding timing drive, temperature control, analog-to-digital conversion, image transmission, remote control telemetry and other hardware circuit modules to form the hardware part of the imager. Finally, the PID temperature control algorithm was applied to achieve accurate temperature control of the imager, and the non-uniformity correction algorithm and image enhancement algorithm were used to improve the image quality of the imager. After test verification, the short-wave infrared imager has a total dose radiation resistance capacity of 25kRad(Si), a dynamic range greater than or equal to 61dB, and a non-uniformity less than or equal to 1.9%, which meets the requirements of short-wave infrared spectroscopy detection of low-orbit satellites.