The crash came after the spacecraft entered an uncontrolled orbit that deviated from the one the agency calculated, it said.

Moscow was hoping to make history in a race to be the first country to make a soft landing on the moon’s icy south pole. The lunar mission marked Russia’s first attempt to land on the moon since 1976, around when the Soviet Union and United States were in deep competition for space dominance during the Cold War.

Russia launches moon mission in first attempt in almost a half-century

Roscosmos on Saturday said it sent a command at 2:10 p.m. Moscow time prompting the lander to enter the pre-landing orbit, but “an emergency occurred on the space probe that did not allow it to perform the maneuver in accordance with the required parameters.”

As Russian and Indian lunar landings near, the moon rush gets crowded

The unmanned spacecraft took off from the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia’s eastern Amur region on Aug. 11 local time.

It has already sent back images of the moon’s Zeeman crater, and was expected to make a landing on Monday — two days before an Indian mission is set to touch down. Their race to land on the south pole of the moon comes amid a rush to establish a lunar presence from countries including the United States and China.

Russia’s lander has a 1.6-meter-long (around 5-foot-3-inches) robotic arm with a scoop to collect rocks, soil and dust. It was expected to operate for a year on the lunar surface on a mission to study the composition of the south pole, where NASA and other agencies have detected traces of frozen water.

Access to that ice is vital to any human settlement, The Washington Post reported — the water not only can sustain life, but its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen also can be used as rocket fuel, potentially positioning the moon as a springboard to other parts of the solar system.

The moonshot, which Russia has been planning for decades, came at a time when the Kremlin is facing international economic sanctions and a pariah status among much of the Western world for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia remains a key partner in the International Space Station, a large spacecraft in orbit around Earth that serves as a home for crews of astronauts from several nations. However, its aerospace sector has been hit by sanctions and limits on the use of Western-made technology, funding and research ties.

Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.