Piscatorial Quagswagging

...the diary of a specialist angler in around the Warwickshire Avon and its tributaries.

Wednesday 23 September 2020

Warwickshire Avon - Yobbery and Yogibogeyboxes

So NASA'S perseverance rover is currently on its 40 million mile journey through space, and is expected to land on Mars by February, 2021.

Once it does, the robotic explorer will hunt for clues of ancient microbial life on the Martian landscape. The Perseverance rover launched on July 30 from the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.


The robot will land on the Jezero Crater, a 28-mile wide, 500-meter-deep crater located in a basin slightly north of the Martian equator.Once it lands on Mars, Perseverance will begin hunting for clues of past microbial life that may have existed during the Red Planet's early history.

The mission will also test out conditions for possible human exploration of Mars by trialling a method of producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, characterizing environmental conditions such as water and dust on Mars, and looking for resources.

Now In order to scan the rocks on Mars for the tiniest hints of life that existed billions of years ago,

Perseverance will use a precision X-ray device powered by artificial intelligence dubbed as PIXL.PIXL, short for Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, is about the size of a sarnie box and located at the end of Perseverance's 7-foot long robotic arm.


The rover will collect at least 20 samples from Mars using a handy drill, literally attached to the robot's arm. The rock samples will be stored away in tubes in a well-identified place on the Martian surface, and left there to be returned to Earth by a future sample return mission to the Red Planet.

But first, Perseverance will use PIXL to scan the rocks using the powerful X-ray beam in order to see where and how much the chemicals are distributed across the rocks' surface. PIXL's X-ray beam is so narrow that it can pinpoint features as small as a grain of salt.


Once it has scanned the rocks, the results from PIXL will inform the science team behind Perseverance over which rocks show potential for housing ancient microbial life and are therefore worth returning to Earth for further investigation.

Now NASA haven't got back to me yet because maybe when the device is done with it can be re-located down to the Warwickshire Avon to try and discover where the heck the Barbel are. 

Now to be fair this stupidly quick dusk session I may well have been visited by a Barbel, because whilst the meat rod was out doing it's thing, out of nowhere a huge bite took the centrepins ratchet off guard and nearly took the rod off the rest.

I struck in to nothing though and usually Barbel hook themselves, so I'm thinking a gluttonous Chevin may well have been the fish giving the rod some gyp.  

I did manage to bank a Chub on the other rod after pull after pull after pull eventually a fish hooked itself. Not a huge fish, probably a nadger over 3lb but when the light goes they really do seem to let their guard down.

The water is gin clear but still come dusk I've never had a problem catching Barbel, especially at this stretch where there are usually barbel in numbers. Still I might have another dangle tomorrow as I'm sure there are some about to be caught, I just them in-front of me this time.

1 comment:

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