This is done using a technique called interferometry, which merges the beams of light in a way that simulates the sharpness (though not the brightness) of the images that would be obtained from a telescope whose mirror was 200 metres across.
Each telescope has a mirror just 10cm across, yet working together they detected the microscopic dimming caused by a planet getting in the way of the distant star.
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When Dr Koechlin and his team pointed it at Mars they could distinguish that planet's two tiny moons a task which would require a Newtonian telescope with a mirror at least 30cm across.
To date, the LZT is largest, although India, Belgium and Canada are building the International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT), a 4-meter project which should see completion by March.
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Hubble, too, was built by Lockheed, but its own near-fatal flaw, an improperly shaped mirror which crippled the telescope for three years, was the fault of the mirror's manufacturer, Perkin-Elmer.
Much like a telescope, the larger the mirror, the further out into the cosmos you can see.
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The effective mirror size for a virtual telescope made up of spacecraft flying in formation depends on the separation of those spacecraft.
He would really have appreciated the work that went into making the main mirror on Esa's telescope - itself a technological wonder.
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The resolution of a telescope depends on the diameter of its mirror.
The planned telescope will have a 21-foot diameter mirror, six times as big as Hubble's.
Every safeguard has been taken to prevent a mirror design mishap such as that which afflicted the Hubble Space Telescope and set that mission back a few years, staffers for the current mission said.
And when its aluminium coating is replaced with silver in a year or two's time (a huge vacuum-chamber housed at the telescope's base will be used to deposit metallic vapour on to the mirror's reflecting surface), it will be able to see into the infra-red with equal clarity, opening up a much neglected area of astronomy.
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