An optical pumping source by segmented surface discharge on a Al2O3 ceramic substrate was developed to reliaze the pulse repetitive stability of surface discharge. The discharge jitter and the deviation of radiation intensity were investigated in detail under different conditions. The experimental results show that the discharge jitter mainly depends on the charging voltage, trigger pulse voltage and the distance of discharge gap,and the pulse repetition rate has a little influence on the discharge jitter in the range of 1 to 10 Hz.Furthermore, the deviation of radiation intensity mainly depends on charging voltage, and does not be affected by the pulse repetition rate and gas pressure. Normally, the discharge jitter can be less than 30 ns, and the deviation of radiaion intensity is below 2%. Research results indicate that the optical pumping source has good discharge stability.