Washington, Sep 24 - India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan has been successful in finding traces of water on the lunar surface, the US space agency NASA said here Thursday, and thanked the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the partnership.

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) official said that traces of water and hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, was also found in the lunar soil.

NASA also thanked ISRO for the partnership.

The NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument was one of the instruments aboard the Chandrayaan-I, which was launched Oct 22, 2008. However, the mission had to be aborted Aug 30 after Chandrayaan lost radio contact with the earth.

The analysis of the huge volume of M3 data was carried out by a joint team of scientists from the US and India.