The former California governor supports the conference marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis' 2015 environmental encyclical.

The voluntary offset market is largely unregulated, and it’s really difficult to measure offsets, which can lead to them being overcounted.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 01 October 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02463-2

Across five coastal regions over a four-year period, nearly 300,000 businesses invested a total of €8.7 billion in climate adaptation. An econometric analysis of these data shows that this private sector investment in adaptation modestly boosts regional economic performance, although the extent of the boost varies across sectors and geographies.

“You still had to prove yourself.”

“Every cloud has a blue lining!”

Which of those sentences are you most likely to remember a few minutes from now? If you guessed the second, you’re probably correct.

According to a new study from MIT cognitive scientists, sentences that stick in your mind longer are those that have distinctive meanings, making them stand out from sentences you’ve previously seen. They found that meaning, not any other trait, is the most important feature when it comes to memorability.

“One might have thought that when you remember sentences, maybe it’s all about the visual features of the sentence, but we found that that was not the case. A big contribution of this paper is pinning down that it is the meaning-related space that makes sentences memorable,” says Greta Tuckute PhD ’25, who is now a research fellow at Harvard University’s Kempner Institute.

The findings support the hypothesis that sentences with distinctive meanings — like “Does olive oil work for tanning?” — are stored in brain space that is not cluttered with sentences that mean almost the same thing. Sentences with similar meanings end up densely packed together and are therefore more difficult to recognize confidently later on, the researchers believe.

“When you encode sentences that have a similar meaning, there’s feature overlap in that space. Therefore, a particular sentence you’ve encoded is not linked to a unique set of features, but rather to a whole bunch of features that may overlap with other sentences,” says Evelina Fedorenko, an MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences (BCS), a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the study.

Tuckute and Thomas Clark, an MIT graduate student, are the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Memory and Language. MIT graduate student Bryan Medina is also an author.

Distinctive sentences

What makes certain things more memorable than others is a longstanding question in cognitive science and neuroscience. In a 2011 study, Aude Oliva, now a senior research scientist at MIT and MIT director of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, showed that not all items are created equal: Some types of images are much easier to remember than others, and people are remarkably consistent in what images they remember best.

In that study, Oliva and her colleagues found that, in general, images with people in them are the most memorable, followed by images of human-scale space and close-ups of objects. Least memorable are natural landscapes.

As a follow-up to that study, Fedorenko and Oliva, along with Ted Gibson, another faculty member in BCS, teamed up to determine if words also vary in their memorability. In a study published earlier this year, co-led by Tuckute and Kyle Mahowald, a former PhD student in BCS, the researchers found that the most memorable words are those that have the most distinctive meanings.

Words are categorized as being more distinctive if they have a single meaning, and few or no synonyms — for example, words like “pineapple” or “avalanche” which were found to be very memorable. On the other hand, words that can have multiple meanings, such as “light,” or words that have many synonyms, like “happy,” were more difficult for people to recognize accurately.

In the new study, the researchers expanded their scope to analyze the memorability of sentences. Just like words, some sentences have very distinctive meanings, while others communicate similar information in slightly different ways.

To do the study, the researchers assembled a collection of 2,500 sentences drawn from publicly available databases that compile text from novels, news articles, movie dialogues, and other sources. Each sentence that they chose contained exactly six words.

The researchers then presented a random selection of about 1,000 of these sentences to each study participant, including repeats of some sentences. Each of the 500 participants in the study was asked to press a button when they saw a sentence that they remembered seeing earlier.

The most memorable sentences — the ones where participants accurately and quickly indicated that they had seen them before — included strings such as “Homer Simpson is hungry, very hungry,” and “These mosquitoes are — well, guinea pigs.”

Those memorable sentences overlapped significantly with sentences that were determined as having distinctive meanings as estimated through the high-dimensional vector space of a large language model (LLM) known as Sentence BERT. That model is able to generate sentence-level representations of sentences, which can be used for tasks like judging meaning similarity between sentences. This model provided researchers with a distinctness score for each sentence based on its semantic similarity to other sentences.

The researchers also evaluated the sentences using a model that predicts memorability based on the average memorability of the individual words in the sentence. This model performed fairly well at predicting overall sentence memorability, but not as well as Sentence BERT. This suggests that the meaning of a sentence as a whole — above and beyond the contributions from individual words — determines how memorable it will be, the researchers say.

Noisy memories

While cognitive scientists have long hypothesized that the brain’s memory banks have a limited capacity, the findings of the new study support an alternative hypothesis that would help to explain how the brain can continue forming new memories without losing old ones.

This alternative, known as the noisy representation hypothesis, says that when the brain encodes a new memory, be it an image, a word, or a sentence, it is represented in a noisy way — that is, this representation is not identical to the stimulus, and some information is lost. For example, for an image, you may not encode the exact viewing angle at which an object is shown, and for a sentence, you may not remember the exact construction used.

Under this theory, a new sentence would be encoded in a similar part of the memory space as sentences that carry a similar meanings, whether they were encountered recently or sometime across a lifetime of language experience. This jumbling of similar meanings together increases the amount of noise and can make it much harder, later on, to remember the exact sentence you have seen before.

“The representation is gradually going to accumulate some noise. As a result, when you see an image or a sentence for a second time, your accuracy at judging whether you’ve seen it before will be affected, and it’ll be less than 100 percent in most cases,” Clark says.

However, if a sentence has a unique meaning that is encoded in a less densely crowded space, it will be easier to pick out later on.

“Your memory may still be noisy, but your ability to make judgments based on the representations is less affected by that noise because the representation is so distinctive to begin with,” Clark says.

The researchers now plan to study whether other features of sentences, such as more vivid and descriptive language, might also contribute to making them more memorable, and how the language system may interact with the hippocampal memory structures during the encoding and retrieval of memories.

The research was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health, the McGovern Institute, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the Simons Center for the Social Brain, and the MIT Quest Initiative for Intelligence.

There is a lot of bad on the internet and it seems to only be getting worse. But one of the things the internet did well, and is worth preserving, is nontraditional paths for creativity, journalism, and criticism. As governments and major corporations throw up more barriers to expression—and more and more gatekeepers try to control the internet—it’s important to learn how to crash through those gates. 

In EFF's interview series, Gate Crashing, we talk to people who have used the internet to take nontraditional paths to the very traditional worlds of journalism, creativity, and criticism. We hope it's both inspiring to see these people and enlightening for anyone trying to find voices they like online.  

Our mini-series will be dropping an episode each month closing out 2025 in style.

• Episode 1: Fanfiction Becomes Mainstream – Launching October 1*
• Episode 2: From DIY to Publishing – Launching November 1
• Episode 3: A New Path for Journalism – Launching December 1

Be sure to mark your calendar or check our socials on drop dates. If you have a friend or colleague that might be interested in watching our series, please forward this link: eff.org/gatecrashing

Check Out Episode 1

For over 35 years, EFF members have empowered attorneys, activists, and technologists to defend civil liberties and human rights online for everyone.

Tech should be a tool for the people, and we need you in this fight.

Donate Today

* This interview was originally published in December 2024. No changes have been made

Whether due to generative AI hallucinations or human sloppiness, the internet is increasingly rife with bogus news content—and you can count EFF among the victims. 

WinBuzzer published a story June 26 with the headline, “Microsoft Is Getting Sued over Using Nearly 200,000 Pirated Books for AI Training,” containing this passage:  winbuzzer_june_26.png

That quotation from EFF’s Corynne McSherry was cited again in two subsequent, related stories by the same journalist—one published July 27, the other August 27. 

But the link in that original June 26 post was fake. Corynne McSherry never wrote such an article, and the quote was bogus. 

Interestingly, we noted a similar issue with a June 13 post by the same journalist, in which he cited work by EFF Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin; this quote included the phrase “get-out-of-jail-free card” too. 

winbuzzer_june_13.png

Again, the link he inserted leads nowhere because Eva Galperin never wrote such a blog or white paper.  

When EFF reached out, the journalist—WinBuzzer founder and editor-in-chief Markus Kasanmascheff—acknowledged via email that the quotes were bogus. 

“This indeed must be a case of AI slop. We are using AI tools for research/source analysis/citations. I sincerely apologize for that and this is not the content quality we are aiming for,” he wrote. “I myself have noticed that in the particular case of the EFF for whatever reason non-existing quotes are manufactured. This usually does not happen and I have taken the necessary measures to avoid this in the future. Every single citation and source mention must always be double checked. I have been doing this already but obviously not to the required level. 

“I am actually manually editing each article and using AI for some helping tasks. I must have relied too much on it,” he added. 

AI slop abounds 

It’s not an isolated incident. Media companies large and small are using AI to generate news content because it’s cheaper than paying for journalists’ salaries, but that savings can come at the cost of the outlets’ reputations.  

The U.K.’s Press Gazette reported last month that Wired and Business Insider had to remove news features written by one freelance journalist after concerns the articles are likely AI-generated works of fiction: “Most of the published stories contained case studies of named people whose details Press Gazette was unable to verify online, casting doubt on whether any of the quotes or facts contained in the articles are real.” 

And back in May, the Chicago Sun-Times had to apologize after publishing an AI-generated list of books that would make good summer reads—with 10 of the 15 recommended book descriptions and titles found to be “false, or invented out of whole cloth.” 

As journalist Peter Sterne wrote for Nieman Lab in 2022: 

Another potential risk of relying on large language models to write news articles is the potential for the AI to insert fake quotes. Since the AI is not bound by the same ethical standards as a human journalist, it may include quotes from sources that do not actually exist, or even attribute fake quotes to real people. This could lead to false or misleading reporting, which could damage the credibility of the news organization. It will be important for journalists and newsrooms to carefully fact check any articles written with the help of AI, to ensure the accuracy and integrity of their reporting. 

(Or did he write that? Sterne disclosed in that article that he used OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 to generate that paragraph, ironically enough.) 

The Radio Television Digital News Association issued guidelines a few years ago for the use of AI in journalism, and the Associated Press is among many outlets that have developed guidelines of their own. The Poynter Institute offers a template for developing such policies.  

Nonetheless, some journalists or media outlets have been caught using AI to generate stories including fake quotes; for example, the Associated Press reported last year that a Wyoming newspaper reporter had filed at least seven stories that included AI-generated quotations from six people.  

WinBuzzer wasn’t the only outlet to falsely quote EFF this year. An April 19 article in Wander contained another bogus quotation from Eva Galperin: 

April 19 Wander clipping with fake quote from Eva Galperin

An email to the outlet demanding the article’s retraction went unanswered. 

In another case, WebProNews published a July 24 article quoting Eva Galperin under the headline “Risika Data Breach Exposes 100M Swedish Records to Fraud Risks,” but Eva confirmed she’d never spoken with them or given that quotation to anyone. The article no longer seems to exist on the outlet’s own website, but it was captured by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. 

07-24-2025_webpronews_screenshot.png  

A request for comment made through WebProNews’ “Contact Us” page went unanswered, and then they did it again on September 2, this time misattributing a statement to Corynne McSherry: 

09-02-2025_webpronews_corynne_mcsherry.png
No such article in The Verge seems to exist, and the statement is not at all in line with EFF’s stance. 

Our most egregious example 

The top prize for audacious falsity goes to a June 18 article in the Arabian Post, since removed from the site after we flagged it to an editor. The Arabian Post is part of the Hyphen Digital Network, which describes itself as “at the forefront of AI innovation” and offering “software solutions that streamline workflows to focus on what matters most: insightful storytelling.” The article in question included this passage: 

Privacy advocate Linh Nguyen from the Electronic Frontier Foundation remarked that community monitoring tools are playing a civic role, though she warned of the potential for misinformation. “Crowdsourced neighbourhood policing walks a thin line—useful in forcing transparency, but also vulnerable to misidentification and fear-mongering,” she noted in a discussion on digital civil rights. 

muck_rack_june_19_-_arabian_post.png

Nobody at EFF recalls anyone named Linh Nguyen ever having worked here, nor have we been able to find anyone by that name who works in the digital privacy sector. So not only was the quotation fake, but apparently the purported source was, too.  

Now, EFF is all about having our words spread far and wide. Per our copyright policy, any and all original material on the EFF website may be freely distributed at will under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY), unless otherwise noted. 

But we don't want AI and/or disreputable media outlets making up words for us. False quotations that misstate our positions damage the trust that the public and more reputable media outlets have in us. 

If you're worried about this (and rightfully so), the best thing a news consumer can do is invest a little time and energy to learn how to discern the real from the fake. It’s unfortunate that it's the public’s burden to put in this much effort, but while we're adjusting to new tools and a new normal, a little effort now can go a long way.  

As we’ve noted before in the context of election misinformation, the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica has published a handy guide about how to tell if what you’re reading is accurate or “fake news.” And the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions infographic on How to Spot Fake News is a quick and easy-to-read reference you can share with friends: 

how_to_spot_fake_news.jpg

This is the seventh installment in a blog series documenting EFF's findings from the Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. You can read additional posts here. 

For users hoping to promote or boost an abortion-related post on Meta platforms, the Community Standards are just step one. While the Community Standards apply to all posts, paid posts and advertisements must also comply with Meta's Advertising Standards. It’s easy to understand why Meta places extra requirements on paid content. In fact, their “advertising policy principles” outline several important and laudable goals, including promoting transparency and protecting users from scams, fraud, and unsafe and discriminatory practices. 

But additional standards bring additional content moderation, and with that comes increased potential for user confusion and moderation errors. Meta’s ad policies, like its enforcement policies, are vague on a number of important questions. Because of this, it’s no surprise that Meta's ad policies repeatedly came up as we reviewed our Stop Censoring Abortion submissions. 

There are two important things to understand about these ad policies. First, the ad policies do indeed impose stricter rules on content about abortion—and specifically medication abortion—than Meta’s Community Standards do. To help users better understand what is and isn’t allowed, we took a closer look at the policies and what Meta has said about them. 

Second, despite these requirements, the ad policies do not categorically block abortion-related posts from being promoted as ads. In other words, while Meta’s ad policies introduce extra hurdles, they should not, in theory, be a complete barrier to promoting abortion-related posts as boosted content. Still, our analysis revealed that Meta is falling short in several areas. 

What’s Allowed Under the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Policy? 

When EFF asked Meta about potential ad policy violations, the company first pointed to its Drugs and Pharmaceuticals policy. In the abortion care context, this policy applies to paid content specifically about medication abortion and use of abortion pills. Ads promoting these and other prescription drugs are permitted, but there are additional requirements: 

• To reduce risks to consumers, Meta requires advertisers to prove they’re appropriately licensed and get prior authorization from Meta.  
• Authorization is limited to online pharmacies, telehealth providers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers.  
• The ads also must only target people 18 and older, and only in the countries in which the user is licensed.  

Understanding what counts as “promoting prescription drugs” is where things get murky. Crucially, the written policy states that advertisers do not need authorization to run ads that “educate, advocate or give public service announcements related to prescription drugs” or that “promote telehealth services generally.” This should, in theory, leave a critical opening for abortion advocates focused on education and advocacy rather than direct prescription drug sales. 

But Meta told EFF that advertisers “must obtain authorization to post ads discussing medical efficacy, legality, accessibility, affordability, and scientific merits and restrict these ads to adults aged 18 or older.” Yet many of these topics—medical efficacy, legality, accessibility—are precisely what educational content and advocacy often address. Where’s the line? This vagueness makes it difficult for abortion pill advocates to understand what’s actually permitted. 

What’s Allowed Under the Social Issues Policy?  

Meta also told EFF that its Ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics policy may apply to a range of abortion-related content. Under this policy, advertisers within certain countries—including the U.S.—must meet several requirements before running ads about certain “social issues.” Requirements include: 

• Completing Meta’s social issues authorization process; 
• Including a verified "Paid for by" disclaimer on the ad; and 
• Complying with all applicable laws and regulations. 

While certain news publishers are exempt from the policy, it otherwise applies to a wide range of accounts, including activists, brands, non-profit groups and political organizations. 

Meta defines “social issues” as “sensitive topics that are heavily debated, may influence the outcome of an election or result in/relate to existing or proposed legislation.” What falls under this definition differs by country, and Meta provides country-specific topics lists and examples. In the U.S. and several other countries, ads that include “discussion, debate, or advocacy for or against...abortion services and pro-choice/pro-life advocacy” qualify as social issues ads under the “Civil and Social Rights” category.

Confusingly, Meta differentiates this from ads that primarily sell a product or promote a service, which do not require authorization or disclaimers, even if the ad secondarily includes advocacy for an issue. For instance, according to Meta's examples, an ad that says, “How can we address systemic racism?” counts as a social issues ad and requires authorization and disclaimers. On the other hand, an ad that says, “We have over 100 newly-published books about systemic racism and Black History now on sale” primarily promotes a product, and would not require authorization and disclaimers. But even with Meta's examples, the line is still blurry. This vagueness invites confusion and content moderation errors.

What About the Health and Wellness Policy? 

Oddly, Meta never specifically identified its Health and Wellness ad policy to EFF, though the policy is directly relevant to abortion-related paid content. This policy addresses ads about reproductive health and family planning services, and requires ads regarding “abortion medical consultation and related services” to be targeted at users 18 and older. It also expressly states that for paid content involving “[r]eproductive health and wellness drugs or treatments that require prescription,” accounts must comply with both this policy and the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals policy. 

This means abortion advocates must navigate the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals policy, the Social Issues policy, and the Health and Wellness policy—each with its own requirements and authorization processes. That Meta didn’t mention this highly relevant policy when asked about abortion advertising underscores how confusingly dispersed these rules are. 

Like the Drugs policy, the Health and Wellness policy contains an important education exception for abortion advocates: The age-targeting requirements do not apply to “[e]ducational material or information about family planning services without any direct promotion or facilitation of the services.”  

When Content Moderation Makes Mistakes 

Meta's complex policies create fertile ground for automated moderation errors. Our Stop Censoring Abortion survey submissions revealed that Meta's systems repeatedly misidentified educational abortion content as Community Standards violations. The same over-moderation problems are also a risk in the advertising context.  

On top of that, content moderation errors even on unpaid posts can trigger advertising restrictions and penalties. Meta's advertising restrictions policy states that Community Standards violations can result in restricted advertising features or complete advertising bans. This creates a compounding problem when educational content about abortion is wrongly flagged. Abortion advocates could face a double penalty: first their content is removed, then their ability to advertise is restricted. 

This may be, in part, what happened to Red River Women's Clinic, a Minnesota abortion clinic we wrote about earlier in this series. When its account was incorrectly suspended for violating the “Community Standards on drugs,” the clinic appealed and eventually reached out to a contact at Meta. When Meta finally removed the incorrect flag and restored the account, Red River received a message informing them they were no longer out of compliance with the advertising restrictions policy. 

Screenshot submitted by Red River Women's Clinic to EFF

How Meta Can Improve 

Our review of the ad policies and survey submissions showed that there is room for improvement in how Meta handles abortion-related advertising. 

First, Meta should clarify what is permitted without prior authorization under the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals policy. As noted above, the policies say advertisers do not need authorization to “educate, advocate or give public service announcements,” but Meta told EFF authorization is needed to promote posts discussing “medical efficacy, legality, accessibility, affordability, and scientific merits.” Users should be able to more easily determine what content falls on each side of that line.  

Second, Meta should clarify when its Social Issues policy applies. Does discussing abortion at all trigger its application? Meta says the policy excludes posts primarily advertising a service, yet this is not what survey respondent Lynsey Bourke experienced. She runs the Instagram account Rouge Doulas, a global abortion support collective and doula training school. Rouge Doulas had a paid post removed under this very policy for advertising something that is clearly a service: its doula training program called “Rouge Abortion Doula School.” The policy’s current ambiguity makes it difficult for advocates to create compliant content with confidence.

Third, and as EFF has previously argued, Meta should ensure its automated system is not over-moderating. Meta must also provide a meaningful appeals process for when errors inevitably occur. Automated systems are blunt tools and are bound to make mistakes on complex topics like abortion. But simply using an image of a pill on an educational post shouldn’t automatically trigger takedowns. Improving automated moderation will help correct the cascading effect of incorrect Community Standards flags triggering advertising restrictions. 

With clearer policies, better moderation, and a commitment to transparency, Meta can make it easier for accounts to share and boost vital reproductive health information. 

This is the seventh post in our blog series documenting the findings from our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. Read more at https://www.eff.org/pages/stop-censoring-abortion   

Affected by unjust censorship? Share your story using the hashtag #StopCensoringAbortion. Amplify censored posts and accounts, share screenshots of removals and platform messages—together, we can demonstrate how these policies harm real people. 

The successful test of SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle, following a series of engineering challenges and failed launches, has reignited excitement over the possibilities this massive rocket may unlock for humanity’s greatest ambitions in space. The largest rocket ever built, Starship and its 33-engine “super heavy” booster completed a full launch into Earth orbit on Aug. 26, deployed eight test prototype satellites, and survived reentry for a simulated landing before coming down, mostly intact, in the Indian Ocean. The 400-foot rocket is designed to carry up to 150 tons of cargo to low Earth orbit, dramatically increasing potential payload volume from rockets currently in operation. In addition to the planned Artemis III mission to the lunar surface and proposed missions to Mars in the near future, Starship also poses an opportunity for large-scale scientific missions throughout the solar system.

The National Academy of Sciences Planetary Science Decadal Survey published a recommendation in 2022 outlining exploration of Uranus as its highest-priority flagship mission. This proposed mission was envisioned for the 2030s, assuming use of a Falcon Heavy expendable rocket and anticipating arrival at the planet before 2050. Earlier this summer, a paper from researchers in MIT’s Engineering Systems Lab found that Starship may enable this flagship mission to Uranus in half the flight time. 

In this 3Q, Chloe Gentgen, a PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics and co-author on the recent study, describes the significance of Uranus as a flagship mission and what the current trajectory of Starship means for scientific exploration.

Q: Why has Uranus been identified as the highest-priority flagship mission? 

A: Uranus is one of the most intriguing and least-explored planets in our solar system. The planet is tilted on its side, is extremely cold, presents a highly dynamic atmosphere with fast winds, and has an unusual and complex magnetic field. A few of Uranus’ many moons could be ocean worlds, making them potential candidates in the search for life in the solar system. The ice giants Uranus and Neptune also represent the closest match to most of the exoplanets discovered. A mission to Uranus would therefore radically transform our understanding of ice giants, the solar system, and exoplanets. 

What we know about Uranus largely dates back to Voyager 2’s brief flyby nearly 40 years ago. No spacecraft has visited Uranus or Neptune since, making them the only planets yet to have a dedicated orbital mission. One of the main obstacles has been the sheer distance. Uranus is 19 times farther from the sun than the Earth is, and nearly twice as far as Saturn. Reaching it requires a heavy-lift launch vehicle and trajectories involving gravity assists from other planets. 

Today, such heavy-lift launch vehicles are available, and trajectories have been identified for launch windows throughout the 2030s, which resulted in selecting a Uranus mission as the highest priority flagship in the 2022 decadal survey. The proposed concept, called Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP), would release a probe into the planet’s atmosphere and then embark on a multiyear tour of the system to study the planet’s interior, atmosphere, magnetosphere, rings, and moons. 

Q: How do you envision your work on the Starship launch vehicle being deployed for further development?

A: Our study assessed the feasibility and potential benefits of launching a mission to Uranus with a Starship refueled in Earth’s orbit, instead of a Falcon Heavy (another SpaceX launch vehicle, currently operational). The Uranus decadal study showed that launching on a Falcon Heavy Expendable results in a cruise time of at least 13 years. Long cruise times present challenges, such as loss of team expertise and a higher operational budget. With the mission not yet underway, we saw an opportunity to evaluate launch vehicles currently in development, particularly Starship. 

When refueled in orbit, Starship could launch a spacecraft directly to Uranus, without detours by other planets for gravity-assist maneuvers. The proposed spacecraft could then arrive at Uranus in just over six years, less than half the time currently envisioned. These high-energy trajectories require significant deceleration at Uranus to capture in orbit. If the spacecraft slows down propulsively, the burn would require 5 km/s of delta v (which quantifies the energy needed for the maneuver), much higher than is typically performed by spacecraft, which might result in a very complex design. A more conservative approach, assuming a maximum burn of 2 km/s at Uranus, would result in a cruise time of 8.5 years. 

An alternative to propulsive orbit insertion at Uranus is aerocapture, where the spacecraft, enclosed in a thermally protective aeroshell, dips into the planet’s atmosphere and uses aerodynamic drag to decelerate. We examined whether Starship itself could perform aerocapture, rather than being separated from the spacecraft shortly after launch. Starship is already designed to withstand atmospheric entry at Earth and Mars, and thus already has a thermal protection system that could, potentially, be modified for aerocapture at Uranus. While bringing a Starship vehicle all the way to Uranus presents significant challenges, our analysis showed that aerocapture with Starship would produce deceleration and heating loads similar to those of other Uranus aerocapture concepts and would enable a cruise time of six years.

In addition to launching the proposed spacecraft on a faster trajectory that would reach Uranus sooner, Starship’s capabilities could also be leveraged to deploy larger masses to Uranus, enabling an enhanced mission with additional instruments or probes.

Q: What does the recent successful test of Starship tell us about the viability and timeline for a potential mission to the outer solar system?

A: The latest Starship launch marked an important milestone for the company after three failed launches in recent months, renewing optimism about the rocket’s future capabilities. Looking ahead, the program will need to demonstrate on-orbit refueling, a capability central to both SpaceX’s long-term vision of deep-space exploration and this proposed mission.

Launch vehicle selection for flagship missions typically occurs approximately two years after the official mission formulation process begins, which has not yet commenced for the Uranus mission. As such, Starship still has a few more years to demonstrate its on-orbit refueling architecture before a decision has to be made.

Overall, Starship is still under development, and significant uncertainty remains about its performance, timelines, and costs. Even so, our initial findings paint a promising picture of the benefits that could be realized by using Starship for a flagship mission to Uranus.

The Center for International Studies (CIS) empowers students, faculty, and scholars to bring MIT’s interdisciplinary style of research and scholarship to address complex global challenges. 

In this Q&A, Mihaela Papa, the center's director of research and a principal research scientist at MIT, describes her role as well as research within the BRICS Lab at MIT — a reference the BRICS intergovernmental organization, which comprises the nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. She also discusses the ongoing mission of CIS to tackle the world's most complex challenges in new and creative ways.

Q: What is your role at CIS, and some of your key accomplishments since joining the center just over a year ago?

A: I serve as director of research and principal research scientist at CIS, a role that bridges management and scholarship. I oversee grant and fellowship programs, spearhead new research initiatives, build research communities across our center's area programs and MIT schools, and mentor the next generation of scholars. My academic expertise is in international relations, and I publish on global governance and sustainable development, particularly through my new BRICS Lab. 

This past year, I focused on building collaborative platforms that highlight CIS’ role as an interdisciplinary hub and expand its research reach. With Evan Lieberman, the director of CIS, I launched the CIS Global Research and Policy Seminar series to address current challenges in global development and governance, foster cross-disciplinary dialogue, and connect theoretical insights to policy solutions. We also convened a Climate Adaptation Workshop, which examined promising strategies for financing adaptation and advancing policy innovation. We documented the outcomes in a workshop report that outlines a broader research agenda contributing to MIT’s larger climate mission.

In parallel, I have been reviewing CIS’ grant-making programs to improve how we serve our community, while also supporting regional initiatives such as research planning related to Ukraine. Together with the center's MIT-Brazil faculty director Brad Olsen, I secured a MITHIC [MIT Human Insight Collaboration] Connectivity grant to build an MIT Amazonia research community that connects MIT scholars with regional partners and strengthens collaboration across the Amazon. Finally, I launched the BRICS Lab to analyze transformations in global governance and have ongoing research on BRICS and food security and data centers in BRICS. 

Q: Tell us more about the BRICS Lab.

A: The BRICS countries comprise the majority of the world’s population and an expanding share of the global economy. [Originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, and China, BRICS currently includes 11 nations.] As a group, they carry the collective weight to shape international rules, influence global markets, and redefine norms — yet the question remains: Will they use this power effectively? The BRICS Lab explores the implications of the bloc’s rise for international cooperation and its role in reshaping global politics. Our work focuses on three areas: the design and strategic use of informal groups like BRICS in world affairs; the coalition’s potential to address major challenges such as food security, climate change, and artificial intelligence; and the implications of U.S. policy toward BRICS for the future of multilateralism.

Q: What are the center’s biggest research priorities right now?

A: Our center was founded in response to rising geopolitical tensions and the urgent need for policy rooted in rigorous, evidence-based research. Since then, we have grown into a hub that combines interdisciplinary scholarship and actively engages with policymakers and the public. Today, as in our early years, the center brings together exceptional researchers with the ambition to address the world’s most pressing challenges in new and creative ways.

Our core focus spans security, development, and human dignity. Security studies have been a priority for the center, and our new nuclear security programming advances this work while training the next generation of scholars in this critical field. On the development front, our work has explored how societies manage diverse populations, navigate international migration, as well as engage with human rights and the changing patterns of regime dynamics.

We are pursuing new research in three areas. First, on climate change, we seek to understand how societies confront environmental risks and harms, from insurance to water and food security in the international context. Second, we examine shifting patterns of global governance as rising powers set new agendas and take on greater responsibilities in the international system. Finally, we are initiating research on the impact of AI — how it reshapes governance across international relations, what is the role of AI corporations, and how AI-related risks can be managed.

As we approach our 75th anniversary in 2026, we are excited to bring researchers together to spark bold ideas that open new possibilities for the future.

A Saab 340 aircraft recently became a permanent fixture of the fleet at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Flight Test Facility, which supports R&D programs across the lab. 

Over the past five years, the facility leased and operated the twin-engine turboprop, once commercially used for the regional transport of passengers and cargo. During this time, staff modified the aircraft with a suite of radar, sensing, and communications capabilities. Transitioning the aircraft from a leased to a government-owned asset retains the aircraft's capabilities for present and future R&D in support of national security and reduces costs for Lincoln Laboratory sponsors. 

With the acquisition of the Saab, the Flight Test Facility currently maintains five government-owned aircraft — including three Gulfstream IVs and a Cessna 206 — as well as a leased Twin Otter, all housed on Hanscom Air Force Base, just over a mile from the laboratory's main campus.

"Of all our aircraft, the Saab is the most multi-mission-capable," says David Culbertson, manager of the Flight Test Facility. "It's highly versatile and adaptable, like a Swiss Army knife. Researchers from across the laboratory have conducted flight tests on the Saab to develop all kinds of technologies for national security."

For example, the Saab was modified to host the Airborne Radar Testbed (ARTB), a high-performance radar system based on a computer-controlled array of antennas that can be electronically steered (instead of physically moved) in different directions. With the ARTB, researchers have matured innovative radio-frequency technology; prototyped advanced system concepts; and demonstrated concepts of operation for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. With its open-architecture design and compliance with open standards, the ARTB can easily be reconfigured to suit specific R&D needs.

"The Saab has enabled us to rapidly prototype and mature the complex system-of-systems solutions needed to realize critical warfighter capabilities," says Ramu Bhagavatula, an assistant leader of the laboratory's Embedded and Open Systems Group. "Recently, the Saab participated in a major national exercise as a surrogate multi-INT [intelligence] ISR platform. We demonstrated machine-to-machine cueing of our multi-INT payload to automatically recognize targets designated by an operational U.S. Air Force platform. The Saab's flexibility was key to integrating diverse technologies to develop this important capability."

In anticipation of the expiration of the Saab's lease, the Flight Test Facility and Financial Services Department conducted an extensive analysis of alternatives. Comparing the operational effectiveness, suitability, and life-cycle cost of various options, this analysis determined that the optimal solution for the laboratory and the government was to purchase the aircraft.

"Having the Saab in our permanent inventory allows research groups from across the laboratory to continuously leverage each other's test beds and expertise," says Linda McCabe, a project manager in the laboratory's Communication Networks and Analysis Group. "In addition, we can invest in long-term infrastructure updates that will benefit a wide range of users. For instance, my group helped obtain authorizations from various agencies to equip the Saab with Link 16, a secure communications network used by NATO and its allies to share tactical information."

The Saab acquisition is part of a larger recapitalization effort at the Flight Test Facility to support emerging technology development for years to come. This 10-year effort, slated for completion in 2026, is retiring aging, obsolete aircraft and replacing them with newer platforms that will be more cost-effective to maintain, easier to integrate rapidly prototyped systems into, and able to operate under expanded flight envelopes (the performance limits within which an aircraft can safely fly, defined by parameters such as speed, altitude, and maneuverability).

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