An aberration measurement method for hyper-NA lithographic projection lens by use of aerial image based on principal component analysis is proposed. Aerial images of the hyper-NA lithographic projection lens are expressed accurately by using polarized light and vector imaging model, as well as considering the polarization properties. As a result, the accuracy of the measurement model is improved and the aberrations of hyper- NA lithographic projection lens are measured accurately. Compared with the conventional AMAI-PCA method, the proposed method is applicable for the hyper-NA lithographic projection lens. The lithographic simulator PROLITH is used to validate the accuracies of aberration measurement and analyze the impacts of the sample interval of aerial images on the accuracy of the aberration measurement. The result shows that the proposed method can retrieve 33 terms of Zernike coefficients (Z₅~Z₃₇) with maximum error less than 0.85×10^-3λ.