You're right: Going somewhere full of tech geeks and discussing the finer points of English should be expected to whoosh right over their heads and anger them.

Clearly the issue is that whooshes right over your and sundry down-voter's heads is within my point: the spacecraft failed and its operators could not find it. Stating that the craft vanished has the effect of moving the fault to something other than the operators.

If you don't think headlines matter, then the propagandists win.