How come there's not more sattelites around the moon taking high resolution, high zoom photos to for example find this object? We can see beachball-sized objects on consumer-available photos (e.g. google maps/earth), and that's from over 100 km up through an atmosphere. I guess the answer is "nobody paid for it" but still.

There's google maps for the moon (https://www.google.com/maps/space/moon) but I'm not sure what resolution that is.

Most high resolution "satellite" imagery on Google Maps etc is actually stitched from photographs taken from cameras attached to small aeroplanes which fly at a low altitude even compared to commercial flights let alone 100km.

There are a few high resolution satellites but there frame is very small and not suited for complete coverage. If they are geostationary they cant look anywhere, or they have to look at an angle giving oblique photos. If they are moving then they are only over the part of the earth once per several days (weeks/months?)

So while these images of the landers are from a satellite orbiting the moon, the satellite is orbiting with an eccentric polar orbit, and the images it takes may be perfect for it's mission but might not be good enough to identify small 1960's landers.

> that's from over 100 km up through an atmosphere

Could be from atmospheric fly-overs.