An Israeli spacecraft crashed onto the moon after a series of technical failures during its final descent.
The crash shatters hopes of a historic controlled landing on the lunar surface by the space craft, dubbed Beresheet.
The unmanned robotic lander suffered engine and communications failures during the 21 minutes of the landing sequence on Thursday, the support team said.
Beresheet, whose name is Hebrew for the biblical phrase "In the beginning'', had travelled through space for seven weeks in a series of expanding orbits around Earth before crossing into the moon's gravity last week.
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The final manoeuvre on Wednesday brought it into a tight elliptical orbit around the moon, 15-17 km (9-10.5 miles) from the surface at its closest.
From there it was a short, nail-biting and ultimately disappointing conclusion.
So far, only three nations have succeeded in carrying out a "soft" landing on the lunar surface: the United States, the Soviet Union and China.
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The Israeli spacecraft, which is about the size of a dishwasher blasted off from Cape Canaveral on February 21, on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Beresheet spacecraft was originally developed by SpaceIL as an entry to Google's Lunar XPRIZE - an international competition to build, launch and land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon.
In January 2017, SpaceIL became one of the competition's five finalists, competing for a $30 million (£23 million) prize.
