You'd need either the biggest space telescope ever that doesn't yet exist, or a lunar orbiter. The latter is how other space agencies have taken pictures of the landing sites.

[–] Valmond 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Now I'm curious, what's the resolution (like in meters) of a good home pro telescope watching the moon at say the best of times?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'm no astronomer or astrophotographer, but this picture of the moon clocks in at around 320 meter angular resolution. That being said, a lot of post-processing goes into a shot like that, so some detail may be lost due to that. The atmosphere of the Earth is pretty difficult to deal with as its disturbances cause fuzziness and shimmering. Stacking multiple frames can help, but it's still never perfect. Earth based telescopes sometimes shoot a laser up along their line of sight to get an idea of how the atmosphere is messing with them.

For comparison, The Hubble space telescope gets around 90 m angular resolution for objects at the distance of the Moon.

[–] Valmond 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks! So waay too big to see a moon lander.