> Use some computational methods to combine the sensor collection from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these kinds of spacecraft and you could end up with pla

> Use some computational methods to combine the sensor collection from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these kinds of spacecraft and you could end up with planet sized instruments pretty efficiently. This kind of thing cannot currently be done at optical wavelengths no matter how much computational power you throw at it; the frequencies are simply too high to do phase capture and syncing digitally. It's done on a limited basis at the very large telescope (VLT) in Chile but the phase combiners there are optical and analog.