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At approximately 350 million meters away currently, you would need a telescope of 200-meter diameter minimum to be able to resolve it (Dawes limit). No such telescope exists and at that size, the atmospheric disturbances would be almost impossible to filter out.

There was someone answering the question about seeing the LEM with a telescope and by the math the telescope needed to be huge only to get a pixel worth of LEM.

By that I guess can't see much if you want to look at it while orbiting the Moon, maybe when it will be nearer on its way back will be possible.

Now all depends on the size of the telescope, some amateurs showed pictures of the ISS with distinguishable dragon capsule so orion should be visible aswell.

Good luck tracking the orion capsule position tho.

With the moon being what, about a hundred-thousand times further away than ISS when it's overhead, I have a doubt.

It's already tens of thousands of times as far out and realistically will still be hundreds of times as far away as ISS around the time the last population center passes out of view of it at night as it makes its approach.

Yeah, ISS was for reference distance at which the capsule is may be still visible.

Yes, it is. It is bright enough that it would appear as a dot on a tracked image, or as a line on an untracked one.

It is essentially a very reflective (high albedo) NEO (near-earth object) at <1 lunar-distance. A quick back of envelope calculation gives it a magnitude of around 16-18, a touch brighter than Pluto.

We can detect dark (asphalt or even darker) rocks smaller than Orion at a greater distance.

A similarly quick spherical-cow physics back of envelope calculation tells me we could detect the Orion capsule out around the distance of Mars.

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