No, NASA did not officially attempt this, and such a feat cannot be accomplished without an extremely specialized telescope, or without being seen through an orbiting lunar satellite. There is a lot of telescope science behind why you can't, but suffice to say that the Apollo Lunar Module is simply way too small. From lunar leg to lunar leg, each module is only 9 meters across, with the main bulk of descent stage being only 4 meters across. This article fully explains the science behind why you cannot achieve this, even with a telescope like Hubble.

As far as pointing things at Moon goes however, on Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin did leave behind the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment, as did the crews of Apollo 14 and 15. With the experiment fully set up on the Lunar surface, scientists on Earth would then aim lasers at the experiments retroreflectors to measure the approximate distance between the Earth and the Moon, based upon the time it would take for the light to reflect back. (Distance = speed of light x amount of time taken for light to reflect.) We discovered the distance (although it changes for a number of reasons) is about 384,467 kilometers and the Moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about 3.8 cm a year.