Science News Roundup: Drone taxi take first spin in air traffic near Paris; Hurricane threat prompts NASA to delay next launch attempt of moon rocket and more

Researchers on Wednesday said NASA's Hubble Space Telescope managed to capture three separate images spanning a period of eight days starting just hours after the detonation - an achievement even more noteworthy considering how long ago and far away it occurred. Drone taxi take first spin in air traffic near Paris An electric helicopter with multiple rotors took its first flight in conventional air traffic near Paris on Thursday as it prepares for commercial flights from 2024.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

COP27: Israel harnessing DNA of bygone wild crops to enhance food supply

Could the key to securing the world's food supply for the future be hidden in the DNA of crops from the distant past? Scientists in Israel are creating a gene bank from the seeds of local wild crops, some that have survived for thousands of years since the birth of agriculture and that may help farmers deal with a harsher climate in the coming decades.

Hubble telescope reveals huge star's explosion in blow-by-blow detail

About 11.5 billion years ago, a distant star roughly 530 times larger than our sun died in a cataclysmic explosion that blew its outer layers of gas into the surrounding cosmos, a supernova documented by astronomers in blow-by-blow detail. Researchers on Wednesday said NASA's Hubble Space Telescope managed to capture three separate images spanning a period of eight days starting just hours after the detonation - an achievement even more noteworthy considering how long ago and far away it occurred.

Drone taxi take first spin in air traffic near Paris

An electric helicopter with multiple rotors took its first flight in conventional air traffic near Paris on Thursday as it prepares for commercial flights from 2024. The Volocopter test aircraft, which resembles a large drone with eight rotors, took off with a passenger on board from the Pontoise-Cormeilles airfield outside Paris and briefly circled around while other aircraft were in the vicinity.

Hurricane threat prompts NASA to delay next launch attempt of moon rocket

NASA will batten down its big new moon rocket on the launch pad to ride out a hurricane expected to hit near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and its targeted liftoff time next week has been postponed by two days, the U.S. space agency said on Monday. Kennedy Space Center lies near the middle of a 240-mile stretch of Florida's Atlantic shore, where forecasters say Tropical Storm Nicole is most likely to strike Wednesday night or early Thursday as a category 1 hurricane.

Explainer-What the latest U.N. science says about climate change

At the COP27 conference in Egypt, delegates have at their disposal decades of research into warming trajectories published by the U.N. climate science agency to inform their decisions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces reports roughly every five years that represent global scientific consensus on climate change, its causes and its impact. Last year's report tackled the main drivers of global warming and the core elements of climate science.