A 3 m wide white sphere at one lunar distance from Earth will be magnitude 14.5 at the ground, and a 10-inch telescope under good skies has a limiting magnitude of about 15. There
are issues with optically tracking satellites in low orbits, because they cross into the Earth's shadow soon after dusk and reappear only shortly before dawn. But with a 10-inch mirror,
you can make live pictures of the ISS that show the individual solar panels (
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b...5/shuttle-and-station-imaged-from-the-ground/ ,
http://www.smh.com.au/world/science...ter-snaps-shuttle-in-space-20090324-988l.html). The US Air Force's surveillance telescopes can do better. They will not reveal how much better, but I estimate about 10 cm resolution on the lowest-orbiting satellites.
As everybody has noted, it is almost impossible to convincingly fake a space mission - and doing so would be more trouble than actually doing the mission.
To date, the only country that has attempted to fake a mission success has been North Korea, which claimed to have launched a satellite during one of their long-range missile tests last year (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmy%C5%8Fngs%C5%8Fng-2).
At least four independent groups immediately called them on the lie, since the rocket was tracked and seen to fall into the Pacific. Only the North Korean official news media bothered to focus on the satellite cover story, since the missile test was far more worrisome internationally.