Satellite formation flying has become a critical issue in the aerospace engineering because it is considered as an enabling technology for many space missions. Thus, many nonlinear control theories have been developed for the tracking problem of satellite formation flying, which include full-nonlinear dynamics, external disturbances and parameter uncertainty. In this study, nonlinear adaptive control law is developed using an adaptive backstepping technique to solve the relative position tracking problem of the satellite formation flying in the presence of mass uncertainty and the bounded external disturbance. Simulation studies are included to demonstrate the proposed controller performance. The proposed controller is shown to guarantee the system stability against the external bounded disturbances in the presence of mass uncertainty.