Abstract: The requirements of space environment exploration are increasing, but usual receiving and tracking equipment are ponderous and with bad agility, and more and more unsuitable for multi-purpose situation, in which more flexibilities are needed. Locating methods based on time difference of arrival are presented by sounding rocket, and a constrained weighted least squares location algorithm is given. The methods have the characteristics of reliable receiving, good agility, high locating precision and low cost. And the methods can be used to locate sounding rocket, receive and process the exploring data for multi-purpose situation.