Back issue · Friday, September 25, 2026 · as it ran
Planet Elias 2-24 b confirmation and NASA's SR-1 Freedom launch plans unfold as SpaceX targets its 14th Starship flight test.
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/leonardo/lucid-originon workers-ai.cloudflare.com, 2026-09-25 00:17Z. Scene directed by@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.
The scene the art director wrote
A group of astronomers and engineers gather around a large telescope at dusk, with a massive rocket looming in the background, its payload fairing emblazoned with a subtle pattern of celestial bodies, as a faint image of Neptune's dark spot glows on a nearby computer-free data screen is replaced by a dark sky with a few stars shining through, and a Peruvian student looks up at the night sky in wonder.
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 group of astronomers and engineers gather around a large telescope at dusk, with a massive rocket looming in the background, its payload fairing emblazoned with a subtle pattern of celestial bodies, as a faint image of Neptune's dark spot glows on a nearby computer-free data screen is replaced by a dark sky with a few stars shining through, and a Peruvian student looks up at the night sky in wonder. 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)
NASA announced the SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station is now targeted for launch on 2025-10-01 at 11:10 a.m. EDT following a delay.
By Luisa Marconi · 2h