[Astronomy help] Likelihood of discovery?

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by RyanW

There have been several probes in distant heliocentric orbits. Most of those were either specialized for solar observations (STEREO A and B), close research of NEOs (Hayabusa and OSIRIS-REx), or deep space observations (Spitzer Space Telescope).

There have been proposed missions for asteroid detection systems (which would be ideally equipped to detect spacecraft, as well) in exotic orbits. It's easiest to spot asteroids with your back to the sun, so the Sentinel mission was planned to be placed at Sun-Venus L3. If it hadn't been cancelled, there wouldn't be many places in the solar system that you could reliably hide. At TL 9, the only thing preventing a Sun-Venus L4/5 asteroid binoculars is political will to pay for it.

On the other hand, politicians spending money to avoid a planetary scale extinction is probably less believable than an invisibility cloak.

I never said we dont have "probes" around the Solar System. What I said is that we dont have enough to dected funny objects trying to hide from us.

What I mean is that, for that kind of "alarm system" we would need a sort of "satellite constelation" around our solar system of a kind similar to the satellite constellation that we have around Earth, and such endeavor would only be feasible for a TL10+ civilization