Russia has reported that its Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the moon.

The unmanned robotic lander, which launched earlier this month, crashed after it spun into uncontrolled orbit, Russia's area company Roscosmos reported on Sunday.

It comes after the nation reported an "abnormal situation" that its specialists had been analysing on Saturday.

The mission was the nation's first to the lunar floor in almost 50 years.

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Russia had hoped that the robotic would spend a 12 months gathering samples of rock and dirt after touchdown on the moon's south pole, which was resulting from occur on Monday.

However, the area company mentioned it had misplaced contact with the craft after it bumped into unspecified hassle whereas making ready for the pre-landing orbit.

"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon," Roscosmos mentioned in an announcement on Sunday.

The robotic - which is the dimensions of a small automotive - blasted off on a Soyuz rocket and entered the moon's orbit on Wednesday.

It has since despatched again photographs of the third-deepest crater on the lunar's southern hemisphere, the Zeeman crater.

The lunar south pole is of explicit curiosity to scientists, who imagine the completely shadowed craters include water.

The frozen water within the rocks could possibly be reworked into air and rocket gas, probably permitting for longer human journeys.

No nation has ever really ventured into the area earlier than.

Russia was racing in opposition to India to make the bold touchdown, with its rival having launched its own lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 final month.

Roscosmos has been eager to show itself as a "space superpower" since the invasion of Ukraine saw its experts lose access to Western technology.