NASA’s Curiosity rover lands on Mars after a 352-million mile journey from earth
Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars after a 352 million-mile journey & Curiosity Snaps a Picture of Its Shadow
This is one of the first images taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT). It was taken through a “fisheye” wide-angle lens on one of the rover’s front Hazard-Avoidance cameras at one-quarter of full resolution. The camera is the left eye of a stereo pair positioned at the middle of the rover’s front side.
As planned, the rover’s early engineering images are lower resolution. Larger color images are expected later in the week when the rover’s mast, carrying high-resolution cameras, is deployed.
NASA’s most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars early Monday EDT to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.
“This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030′s, and today’s landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal.”
left image Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.
Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms.
“Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars,” said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The landing takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives.”
Confirmation of Curiosity’s successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.
To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater’s interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.
The mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Helping people live until they die & improving their quality of life is ultimate
Geraldine Tracey, of Our Lady’s Hospice, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, believes “making people better doesn’t have to be cure . . . it is about improving quality of life, comfort . . . to a certain extent it is about affirming life.
In our fortnightly series highlighting the contribution of individuals to our health service, we feature Geraldine Tracey, advanced nurse practitioner in palliative care with Our Lady’s Hospice in Harolds Cross in Dublin,
Dame Cicely Saunders (1918-2005), founder of the modern hospice movement & Dame Cicely Saunders with a patient
You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”
This quote from Dame Cicely Saunders (1918-2005), founder of the modern hospice movement, expresses what those working in palliative care in Ireland aspire to do every day of their working lives.
Whether in a person’s own home, a hospital or hospice, the people some of us will inevitably entrust our last moments to, do an incredibly special job, and all deserve to be celebrated.
One such person is Geraldine Tracey, advanced nurse practitioner in palliative care with Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross in Dublin.
Our Lady’s Hospice and care services comprises two facilities at Harold’s Cross and Blackrock, and provides services from rehabilitation to end-of-life care across inpatient units, day hospices and the community.
Tracey has worked in Harold’s Cross for 16 years, and has recently established the hospice’s first outpatient clinic, which provides patients with specialist multidisciplinary, palliative care input on an outpatient basis.
Tracey’s patients range in age from 20-89, and in essence the outpatient clinic enables them to live as normal a life as possible at home, or to keep “their homes home until absolutely necessary”, she says.
If someone is doing well they might attend the clinic once every three weeks for a range of issues including the management of pain or nausea or psychosocial support.
However, if they are not doing well and it is becoming burdensome to attend, Tracey can arrange for them to be seen by the hospice’s home care team. If they need inpatient care, she can organise that as well.
According to the 2001 report of the National Advisory Committee on Palliative care, “palliative care is the continuing active total care of patients and their families, at a time when the medical expectation is no longer cure. Palliative care responds to physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs, and extends to support in bereavement. The goal of palliative care is the highest possible quality of life for both.”
Explaining the reasons behind her career choice, Tracey says: “I thought medicine and healthcare was very much focused on illnesses and parts of a person. Palliative care was focused on the whole person and how that person not only felt physically, but the psychosocial and spiritual elements. That is what made sense to me. I thought that was how I would like to be looked after.
“The aim is to achieve the greatest quality of life for that person and their family,” she adds.
It is this philosophy of holistic care which has guided Tracey’s entire career to date and it is something she believes should be available to all patients, not just those in palliative care.
Despite the many misconceptions, palliative care is not all about death and dying. In fact, it is about so much more. It is about symptom management, pain control and psychological and spiritual support.
Palliative care professionals like Tracey are also there for people and their families at the end of life.
“You are there at a time in their lives where they share an awful lot with you, so you are quite privileged to support somebody on this journey.”
Preparing somebody to die is therefore an important part of Tracey’s role. This, she explains, is very much guided by the willingness of the individual patient to “go there”, and supporting and guiding them in that. It can include very practical issues such as planning a funeral to discussing the person’s preferred options around the time of their death.
Tracey paid tribute to her colleagues in the hospice as well as the many families who she says provide “a huge amount of care” at home for their loved ones.
While every case is different, some of the common themes that Tracey supports patients through include fear of the unknown and she says that for younger patients leaving family and children behind is extremely difficult.
“People don’t like to lose control, none of us do. So it is about knowing that they can feel safe and . . . be involved in their care and that we will be listening to them.”
Tracey believes that Ireland has increasingly become a “death-denying” society, one that is focused on staying “as young as possible, as beautiful as possible, for as long as possible”.
“We focus on curative treatments and I think we forget that death is part of life,” she says.
Despite the huge strides made by medicine over the past 50 years, Tracey says it is important to understand that it too has its limitations.
According to Tracey, “making people better doesn’t have to be cure . . . it is about improving quality of life, comfort . . . to a certain extent it is about affirming life”.
A 2006 Baseline Study on the Provision of Hospice/Specialist Palliative Care Services in Ireland, which was carried out by the Irish Hospice Foundation with the support of the HSE and Atlantic Philanthropies, found there was “wide regional variances in the provision of hospice/specialist palliative care” and that “patient and family access to comprehensive services largely depends on the region of the country in which the patient resides”.
While there have been some improvements since then, Tracey believes that equity of access is still an issue for many patients and their families today.
She also strongly believes that access to palliative care is a human right.
“I think it would be very nice when people heard the words palliative care that they saw it as a great support, something that is offered that is positive, at a time that is very difficult,” she says.
Palliative care always gives a return on investment
Palliative care programs aren’t just good for patient care and satisfaction; it’s good for business too, according to hospitals that have taken on the promising trend.
For instance, University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center found palliative care intervention in 2007 saved 1,400 ICU patient days at an average of $450 a day, HealthLeaders Media reported.
But savings needn’t be limited to large medical centers.
“Whether you work in a 400-bed hospital or a 100-bed hospital, a palliative care program is likely to pay for itself in both reduced costs and increased patient satisfaction,” Raymond Hino, CEO of Mendocino Coast District Hospital in California, wrote in a previous Hospital Impact post.
Over the past decade, hospital palliative care has increased 138 percent, according to a Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) report. CAPC found that 92 percent of the surveyed seriously ill patients and their families said they would consider palliative care for a loved one, and 92 percent felt it is important to make such services available.
“Simply put, palliative care focuses on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain and stress of a serious illness. It is not the same as hospice care, which applies only to those patients in the final stages of terminal illness. Palliative care, in comparison, applies to people of all ages and is not restricted to terminal patients,” Hino explained.
Palliative care, not to be confused with hospice care, can serve the population of patients not terminally ill but chronically ill that primary care physicians might not have the resources to handle. In addition, palliative care can address not only the frail elderly but also children with chronic conditions, as does the Iowa University Health System with its palliative care program for children. The program aims for wellness for the children and their families, HealthLeaders Media reported.
Keeping patients out of the hospital can offer savings for providers and patients.
“We believe people want to stay functional in their homes,” Bernard Hammes, director of Respecting Choices, an organization owned and operated by Gundersen Luthera in Wisconsin, said in the article. “It’s not only better for the patient but also turns out to be cheaper for healthcare. You invest this time, it’s relatively low-tech and low-cost care, and you prevent three days of hospitalization and you come out ahead.”
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