(CNN) Israel's Beresheet, the first privately-funded mission to the moon, has crashed.

The spacecraft aimed to perform a soft landing on the moon and would have made Israel the fourth country to do so -- and by far the smallest. Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have done it before.

"I am sorry to say that our spacecraft did not make it in one piece to the moon," said Opher Doron, the manager of Israel Aerospace Industries' Space Division.

"We made it all the way to the moon. This is a great accomplishment. We are the seventh country to make it all the way to the moon."

The $100 million spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, lost communications with the control room in Israel during the landing sequence. As program managers who had been watching the mission in real time tried to re-establish communications, they also dealt with issues in the spacecraft's main engine.

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