Direct detection of water in its vapour phase in the tenuous lunar environment through in situ measurements carried out by the Chandra’s Altitudinal Composition Explorer (CHACE) payload, onboard the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) of Chandrayaan I mission vindicates the presence of water on the surface of the moon in form of ice at higher lunar latitudes inferred from IR absorption spectroscopy, (especially that of OH), by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M 3 ) of Chandrayaan I. The quadrupole mass spectrometer based payload, CHACE, sampled the lunar neutral atmosphere every 4s with a broad latitudinal (∼40°N to 90°S, with a resolution of ∼0.1°) and altitudinal (from 98km up to impact on the lunar surface with a resolution of ∼0.25km) coverage in the sunlit side of the moon for the first time. These two (CHACE and M 3 ) complementary experiments are shown to collectively provide unambiguous signatures for the distribution of water in solid and gaseous phases in Earth’s moon.