NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft – the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars – has returned its first pictures of the planet.

After a 10-month journey, MAVEN arrived at the Red Planet on September 21, 2014.

Now safely in orbit, it will observe the Martian upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with solar wind.

Such observations not only help researchers understand what happened to the planet’s ancient atmosphere and its liquid water, but also pave the way for protecting astronauts on future visits.

MAVEN’s IUVS instrument obtained its first images from an altitude of 36,500 km in three ultraviolet wavelength bands.

Blue image shows the ultraviolet light from the Sun scattered from atomic hydrogen gas in an extended cloud that goes to thousands of kilometers above the Red Planet’s surface.

Green shows a different wavelength of ultraviolet sunlight reflected off of atomic oxygen, showing the smaller oxygen cloud.

Red image shows ultraviolet light reflected from the Martian surface. The bright spot in the lower right is light reflected either from polar ice or clouds.

The oxygen gas is held close to Mars by the planet’s gravity, while lighter hydrogen gas is present to higher altitudes and extends past the edges of the image.

These gases derive from the breakdown of water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.