It's not that it doesn't work, it is just prohibitively hard. The other comments here pointed out GEDI which is a LIDAR payload on the ISS. But it's resolution

It's not that it doesn't work, it is just prohibitively hard. The other comments here pointed out GEDI which is a LIDAR payload on the ISS. But it's resolution is only 25 m. This is compared to the resolution of the Umbra satellites of ~0.5-1m. So with something like GEDI you could see large ships. But you would need a larger telescope and/or more powerful laser to get better resolution.