Posted: Wed, Aug 26, 2009, 1:56 PM ET (1756 GMT)
A NASA spacecraft scheduled to crash into the Moon in October used up much of its onboard fuel because of an attitude control problem over the weekend, project officials said Tuesday. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) suffered a fault with its inertial reference unit, which led to the spacecraft's thruster to fire excessively, using up a "substantial" amount of fuel before ground controllers were able to resolve the problem. Project officials believe they still have enough fuel on LCROSS to carry out its prime mission, although with minimal margins. LCROSS, a secondary payload on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission launched in June, is attached to the Centaur upper stage that launched both spacecraft. It will maneuver the Centaur onto a collision course with a crater in the Moon's polar regions and separate to observe the collision before itself colliding with the Moon.

Related Links:

•  Spaceflight Now article
•  New Scientist article
•  NASA LCROSS web site