India's space agency was attacked by North Korean hackers while it was trying to land a spacecraft on the Moon, it is feared.

Cyber experts said the Indian Space Research Organisation was one of five government agencies to come under attack.

Employees are feared to have opened phishing emails from North Korean spammers, accidentally installing malware on to their systems.

Officials have denied that the cyber attack affected the Moon mission, which ended in failure after India lost contact with the spacecraft.

However, the revelation is likely to cause further alarm just days after India's largest nuclear power plant admitted it had similarly been attacked.

Blast-off: India's Chandrayaan-2 moon mission launches earlier this year. Cyber experts believe the space agency was hacked by North Korean spammers

According to the Financial Times, ISRO was warned of the cyber attack during the Chandrayaan-2 moon mission in September.

The space agency insisted that its systems had not been 'compromised' by the attempted hacking.

Prime minister Narendra Modi has championed India as a major space power, declaring earlier this year that the country had entered the 'space super league'.

India shot down a satellite in March, becoming only the fourth country after the United States, Russia and China to do so.

However, the space programme faced a setback when a control station in Bengaluru lost contact with the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft in September.

Modi hugged the visibly distraught chairman of ISRO in an emotional moment broadcast on Indian TV.

The agency will now have to assess the possible threat from North Korean spammers.

Last week, Indian energy bosses admitted there had been a cyber-attack on the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, after initially denying it.

Under attack: The Kudankulam nuclear power plant in southern India (pictured) was targeted by hackers who infected its computers with malware

However, the malware was found to have targeted an administrative computer rather than the plant control system, nuclear officials said.

'The investigation revealed that the infected PC belonged to a user who was connected in the [network] used for administrative purposes,' a statement said.

Experts believe the attack was conducted using DTrack, a type of malware linked to shadowy hacking group Lazarus.

Lazarus, in turn, is believed by U.S. authorities to be controlled by the North Korean government.

The group was slapped with U.S. sanctions earlier this year and accused of targeting military and financial institutions among others.

The site, which opened in 2013, includes Russian-built reactors and a deal to build it was agreed as long ago as 1988 with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.