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abbeyjyesterday at 6:48 PM2 repliesview on HN

That would probably be difficult at optical wavelengths. At radio wavelengths you might have a better shot, but we can build radio interferometric telescopes on Earth and since the atmosphere is relatively transparent at radio frequencies, you probably aren't going to get any advantage by trying to build one in Earth orbit.

Though not the same thing, you may be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...


Replies

privongyesterday at 6:56 PM

There is a mission concept for a far-infrared interferometer: https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/spice/

One would need to go to space for that of course.

floxyyesterday at 11:12 PM

>you probably aren't going to get any advantage by trying to build one in Earth orbit.

People want to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, so that it doesn't have interference from terrestrial RF sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope

...and your spatial resolution is proportional to the size of your telescope. So you could have really high resolution if you speckled your interferometric telescope array units around L1, L2, L4, and L5.