Saturday, Aug. 22, was a tense day for NASA's LCROSS mission to the moon. You may recall that the LCROSS spacecraft was launched together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter this summer, a spectacular event witnessed live by yours truly.

Since the launch and separation from the LRO spacecraft, LCROSS has been making a series of large loops around both the Earth and the moon in order to line itself up for is intended deadly plunge into one of the permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole. It still has the now spent upper stage of its Centaur rocket attached to it, which will hit the lunar surface first, creating a debris plume that the LCROSS spacecraft will observe for a short time before it, too, will smash into the moon.

Since the scientists want to make absolutely sure no water is still trapped in the rocket body the LCROSS spacecraft has been turning the long tube toward the sun in order to boil off any liquid residues that might contaminate the scientific observations at impact. Think of it as similar to a barbeque, where you rotate your tasty morsel in order to get it cooked through properly.

On the day in question the entire assembly wobbled wildly and the thrusters kept firing to keep the spacecraft properly aligned. In doing so they used up a huge amount of propellant intended for precise positioning and trajectory adjustments.

Unfortunately the incident occurred when the spacecraft was out of view of its ground tracking stations, and the moment the lines of communication were re-established everyone knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Controllers traced the fault to the Inertial Reference Unit, a sensor that measures the craft's attitude or position and orientation in space. When the problem occurred the spacecraft switched to its star tracker mode, which is a bit more difficult to use and gobbles up more fuel because it’s a lot more sensitive to small changes.

The problem was solved quickly but now the mission team has to deal with the reality of greatly diminished fuel reserves. They are still trying to determine whether certain aspects of the mission can be cut without compromising the main science objectives. After all, it takes a lot of precision flying to get the rocket stage and the spacecraft lined up just right so they can hit a crater that could potentially harbor water ice.

The little LCROSS craft, cobbled together ingeniously from spare parts and versatile hardware components, functions a bit like one of those river barges where a rather tiny boat can push gigantic tubs of raw materials. If you've ever had a chance to watch one of those barges negotiate a bridge you can imagine what a challenge this is — every move has to be planned way ahead of time, and the tiniest mistake can lead to a catastrophe.

At this point, LCROSS can still do everything it’s supposed to do, but there’s little margin for error now. Still, LCROSS has always been designed as a very simple mission with so-called "moderate risk tolerance," meaning its chance of success is very high. But, as we all know, the best laid plans of mice and men....

Fortunately, it's not mice running this ingenious tugboat in outer space, but some of the brightest minds and most brilliant scientists you can imagine. “Thrifty” and “innovative” are their middle names.

Whatever happens, they will find a way to make the best of the situation, and hopefully on Oct. 9 we'll have a spectacular double crash on the moon. Let's keep our fingers crossed and one eye on www.nasa.gov/lcross  for all the latest news on the impact event.

Beate Czogalla is the associate professor of theater design in the Department of Music and Theater at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a solar system ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com.