This may be a silly question, but would you be able to create an interferometer style telescope array in space via a platform like starlink, ie small, inexpensive sats? Would that reduce/eliminate the need to launch large singular antennas?
replyThat 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.
replyThough not the same thing, you may be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...
>you probably aren't going to get any advantage by trying to build one in Earth orbit.
replyPeople 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 really high resolution if you speckled your interferometric telescope array units around L1, L2, L4, and L5.
There is a mission concept for a far-infrared interferometer: https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/spice/
replyOne would need to go to space for that of course.