Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years has failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and smashed into the moon.

Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday.

“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roskosmos said in a statement.

The failure of the mission underscores the decline of Russia’s space power since the Cold War when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.

Russia has not attempted a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin. 

Luna-25 was supposed to execute a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on Monday, according to Russian space officials.

Russia has been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States which both have advanced lunar ambitions. 

-AAP