NASA hunts rats for public health
From satellite images, NASA can pinpoint the habitats of rodents carrying plague-infected fleas--as part of a program to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease.
NASA's Applied Sciences Program scours the Earth for climate, precipitation and ground-cover changes that encourage disease carrying creatures to thrive, and allows scientists to offer early warnings about potential outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, West Nile virus and bubonic plague.
Read the full story on USA Today: Earthbound mission for NASA: Public health.