This illustration depicts the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) on NASA's MAVEN spacecraft scanning the upper atmosphere of Mars.

IUVS uses limb scans to map the chemical makeup and vertical structure across Mars' upper atmosphere. Doing so during special observations before and after the Oct. 19, 2014, close approach to Mars by comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring yielded information about dust from the comet reaching the Martian atmosphere.

MAVEN is NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the MAVEN project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, and built some of the science instruments for the mission. MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. The university provided science instruments and leads science operations, as well as education and public outreach, for the mission. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built and operates the spacecraft. The University of California at Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory provided instruments for the mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, provides navigation and Deep Space Network support, as well as the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.

For more information about MAVEN, visit http://www.nasa.gov/maven and http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/.

For more information about NASA's Mars Exploration Program, see http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov.