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We tackle the problem of accurate optical tracking of distant man-madeprobes, on Halo orbit around the Earth-Sun libration point L2 and beyond, alonginterplanetary transfers. The improved performance of on-target tracking,especially when observing with small-class telescopes is assessed providing ageneral estimate of the expected S/N ratio in spacecraft detection. Theon-going Gaia mission is taken as a pilot case for our analysis, reporting onfresh literature and original optical photometry and astrometric results. Theprobe has been located, along its projected nominal path, within 0.13 +/- 0.09arcsec, or 0.9 +/- 0.6 km. Spacecraft color appears to be red, with (V-R_c) =1.1 +/- 0.2 and a bolometric correction to the R_c band of (Bol-R_c) = -1.1 +/-0.2. The apparent magnitude, R_c = 20.8 +/- 0.2, is much fainter thanoriginally expected. These features lead to suggest a lower limit for the Bondalbedo a = 0.11 +/- 0.05 and confirm that incident Sun light is stronglyreddened by Gaia through its on-board MLI blankets covering the solar shield.Relying on the Gaia figures, we found that VLT-class telescopes could yet beable to probe distant spacecraft heading Mars, up to 30 million km away, whilea broader optical coverage of the forthcoming missions to Venus and Mars couldbe envisaged, providing to deal with space vehicles of minimum effective areaAeff >= 10^6 cm^2. In addition to L2 surveys, 2m-class telescopes could alsoeffectively flank standard radar-ranging techniques in deep-space probetracking along Earth's gravity-assist maneuvers for interplanetary missions.

Optical tracking of deep-space spacecraft in Halo L2 orbits and beyond: the Gaia mission as a pilot case