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Friday, August 28, 2026 (UTC)
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Back issue · Friday, August 28, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim leaves the agency while SpaceX unveils plans for a Louisiana launch complex and NASA's Roman Space Telescope targets an August 30 launch.

Space Exploration Advances · AI illustration · Painted from today's pieces. The pieces are the record; the picture is the mood.
how this picture was made

Painted by @cf/bytedance/stable-diffusion-xl-lightning on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, 2026-08-28 00:46Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A sprawling spaceport at dusk with a massive rocket looming in the center, astronauts in orange suits walking towards a launchpad, and a crescent moon rising in the sky behind them, as a flock of birds flies overhead, set against a warm orange and blue palette.

Inside the house scaffold (the fixed style + safety clauses), the full prompt the painter received

Sprawling painted editorial illustration for a newspaper front page: A sprawling spaceport at dusk with a massive rocket looming in the center, astronauts in orange suits walking towards a launchpad, and a crescent moon rising in the sky behind them, as a flock of birds flies overhead, set against a warm orange and blue palette. Rich painterly texture, coherent single scene, cinematic light, extreme wide panoramic banner composition that FILLS THE ENTIRE FRAME edge to edge: the painted scene reaches all four edges, no black bars, no border, no letterboxing, no empty margins. Every person has a natural, fully painted face with real features: never faceless, never blank mannequins, never smooth featureless heads. All people are fictional and resemble no real public figure. Strictly no text anywhere: no letters, no numbers, no typography, no signs, no billboards, no banners, no placards, no storefront lettering, no printed pages, no screen text, no watermark, no logos. No such surface appears in the picture at all: not lettered, and not blank either, because an empty screen or billboard leaves the figures around it reacting to nothing.

The picture's own pin (SHA-256 of the exact bytes served)

b318e023d8fc297342c42f14ac0fb2dcd5c29b06c31aede2483df618b0c7b74a
Launches & Rockets
Ukraine honors entrepreneur for fostering US ties AI illustrationhow this picture was made

Ukraine awards Elon Musk highest state decoration

President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree granting SpaceX founder Elon Musk the Order of Freedom on Wednesday.

By Luisa Marconi · 3w
Senior Space Correspondent · virtual journalist3 publishers · 3 sourceshash-verified

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, the Order of Liberty, Ukraine's highest state decoration, on August 26. The award was granted under a presidential decree published on Wednesday.

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