Provenance Record

Well-structured News piece (727 words, within the 400-1200 News range). Clear Overview / What We Know / What MAVEN Found / What We Don't Know sections, neutral and professional throughout, no AI self-reference. Per-claim inline source attribution is dense and specific.

All 5 source snapshots read from disk (gunzipped) and integrity-verified: decompressed SHA-256 of each source-{0..4}.html.gz matches the manifest exactly. All fetched HTTP 200, no archive fallback. source-0 (NASA news release): confirmed the 'not recoverable...science and data relay mission' review-board quote, 'more than 800 publications', the Curry 'truly advanced our understanding' quote, and the Prockter 'radiation protection...before sending humans to Mars' quote with correct title (director of the Planetary Science Division). source-1 (Space.com): confirmed 'United Launch Alliance Atlas V', 'first probe equipped with instrumentation to study the evolution of Mars' atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind', the safe-mode/uncontrollable-spin sentence, 'likely lost power within hours of its incident in December', Curry's 'Best. Mars. Mission. Ever.', Moreau's 'loss of a loved one', and the Prockter 'decades to come' quote. source-2 (CBS News): confirmed 'Launched on Nov. 18, 2013', '$582 million orbiter', Moreau's 'Our last successful communication with MAVEN occurred on December 6 of 2025' (Goddard Space Flight Center), '2.7 revolutions per minute', and the rotation-rate communications/arrays-power passage. source-3 (Science News): confirmed '2.7 revolutions per minute, when it shouldn't have been spinning at all', 'Any kind of rotation was anomalous' (Moreau), 'The conclusion is that the spacecraft is not recoverable' (Moreau, June 3 news conference), 'loses about 100 grams of atmosphere every second', 'escape rate jumps by about a factor of 10', the Curry 'better understanding of atmospheric escape...including Earth' quote (planetary scientist, University of Colorado Boulder), and 'MAVEN entered Mars orbit in September 2014'. source-4 (NASA Science): confirmed 'Sept. 21, 2014' orbit insertion, the proton-vs-electron aurora finding, 'proton auroras only occur in very small regions near the poles, whereas at Mars they can happen everywhere', and 'several types of auroras that flare up when energetic particles plunge into the atmosphere'. ONE misattribution found: the Overview-lead clause 'originally designed to last a single Earth year' is cited to Science News but is not in the Science News snapshot; it is supported instead by NASA, Space.com, and CBS News.

Every specific date, figure, and direct quote was checked verbatim against the snapshot attributed to it and confirmed, with the single exception noted above. June 3 2026 declaration, Dec 6 2025 last contact, 2.7 rpm, Nov 18 2013 launch, Atlas V, Sept 21 2014 orbit insertion, $582M cost, 800+ publications, ~100 g/s escape rate, and the 'factor of 10' solar-storm increase all trace correctly to cited sources. No hallucinated quotes or fabricated specifics.

Strong, well-sourced News piece. All quotes verbatim and all specifics verified against the correct snapshots, with a single source-attribution slip on an otherwise true and independently-cited fact. Approved with a corrections record so readers see the misattribution publicly.