Russia's first lunar mission in decades has failed with its Luna 25 spacecraft crashing into the moon's surface.,

The incident, a blow to Russia's space ambitions, happened after communication with the robotic spacecraft was interrupted.

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said it lost touch with Luna 25 on Saturday around 2:57 p.m. when it seemed that the Luna-25 "switched to an off-design orbit."

However the day before the spacecraft reported an "emergency " as it was trying to enter a pre-landing orbit, according to Roscosmos.

The Russians under the Soviets were rather good at landing on the moon although the last time they did this was 18 August 18, 1976. After that, the programme was abandoned because by then the US had put humans and a small car on the moon which was kind of cool.

Since then the Russian space programme has faced problems with quality control, corruption and funding and now appears to have lost the knack of landing things.

In a social media post, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's former head of science said that no one in the industry "wishes bad onto other explorers... We are reminded that landing on any celestial object is anything but easy & straightforward."