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Could a Spy Satellite, From Space, See a Coin on the Floor?
With current technology, it is unlikely.
The problem is not the satellite itself. It is the atmosphere.
Compare the two photos below, both of the planet Jupiter:
A telescope took one with a mirror ten meters in diameter, the other by a mirror two meters and forty centimeters. Can you find out which is which?
Yes. The top one was taken with the ten meters, the one from the Keck Observatory, on Earth, and the other with two meters and forty centimeters, from the Hubble Telescope, in Earth’s ORBIT. The photo taken by Keck is in false colors; I must warn.
Did you see how the atmosphere distorts the images? That is why it would be tough to achieve a satisfactory resolution of a satellite in orbit: there is no way to escape the atmosphere, since the target, the coin, is inside it.
There are other problems, too. If this spy satellite is in low orbit, the Earth's speed going down there will significantly disrupt the focus. If it is in a high orbit, like the geostationary, everything is more straightforward, but the distance increases tremendously.
