Quote:
Originally Posted by genuinegirly
I don't know if I entirely believe that this is a patch of water. I mean, they've been searching for water on mars for the past 2 decades at least... only now they're finding it? Makes me wonder what kind of half-hearted searches they did in the past. Why did it take them so long to find this random patch of remaining ice?
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As astrocloud said, yes, photographic technology has advanced a lot. Just think back to what was available five years ago vs. today.
As for lazy searching, a planet is a BIG place and it's really hard to examine one closely from millions of miles away. And from 1976-1997 there were no satellite probes sent, all observation was from earth. Currently, there are only three orbiters around mars right now, just imagine how many pictures they would have to take to cover the entire surface of mars at close resolution, and then how many people it would take to examine each of those photos (not to mention transmission time).