A hybrid multiple pulse amplitude and position modulation (H-MPAPM) scheme based on gradual multi-pulse pulse-position modulation (G-MPPM) and multi-level pulse amplitude modulation (M-PAM) schemes is proposed for deep-space optical communication. In this scheme, transmitted information is conveyed by different combinations of the positions and amplitudes of multiple optical pulses. The performance of the proposed scheme with multi-pulse pulse-position modulation (MPPM), G-MPPM and multiple pulse amplitude and position modulation (M-PAPM) schemes in terms of the number of transmitted symbols, data rate, symbol error rate (SER), bit error rate (BER), bandwidth utilization efficiency and power requirements are studied in this work. Our results reveal that, at the same frame size, the proposed scheme allows much more symbols per frame transmission, achieves higher transmission energy and further enhance the bandwidth utilization efficiency of MPPM, G-MPPM and M-PAPM schemes. Moreover, compared to the MPPM and G-MPPM, the proposed scheme achieves lower levels of SERs but at the expense of peak power levels. Furthermore, the proposed scheme outperforms G-MPPM and MPPM schemes by approximately 1 and 2 dB at a BER of 10 −6 , respectively. In addition, the analytical expressions for the BER and SER of the proposed scheme are validated using Monte Carlo (MC) simulations.