Abstract

More than 30 years ago, human beings looked back from the Moon to see the magnificent spectacle of Earth-rise. The technology that put us into space has since been used to assess the damage we are doing to our natural environment and is now being harnessed to monitor and predict diseases through space and time. Satellite sensor data promise the development of early-warning systems for diseases such as malaria, which kills between 1 and 2 million people each year.

1. TALA Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
2. Oxford Tick Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
3. Kenya Medical Research Institute/Wellcome Trust Collaborative Programme, PO Box 43640, Nairobi, Kenya
4. Centre for Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, OX3 9DU, UK

Correspondence to: David J. Rogers¹ (e-mail: Email: david.rogers@zoo.ox.ac.uk)