A specific system structure of down-looking synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL) is given, and a far-field experiment over 6 km of down-looking SAIL under this system design is carried out. The down-looking SAIL can overcome the influence of atmospheric turbulence to a great extent. By applying this system design, it also has advantages in self-compensating phase modulation. A fine image is obtained after aligning in the orthogonal direction and phase error compensation in the travel direction based on a dominant scatterer. The achieved imaging resolutions in the two dimensions are both better than 5 cm.