The spectacular show that comet Siding Spring created on Mars also threatened NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet.

Due to technological limitations, NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers were unable to capture the light show caused by Siding Spring’s close fly-by of Mars last month after it dumped tons of primordial dust on the atmosphere of the red planet. However, the dust posed a serious threat to the spacecraft that orbit the planet, according to a CBS News report.

Although the comet did not pose a major risk to orbiting spacecraft, NASA maneuvered them to the far side of the planet during the approach of the comet — which turned out to be wise, as comet dust peppered the upper atmosphere where the spacecraft reside.

Also known as Comet C/2013 A1, Siding Spring came from the Oort Cloud, a group of comets that was left over from the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago that extends from Pluto to about halfway to the nearest star. This was the comet’s first visit to the inner solar system. It started making its way here a million years ago when the gravity of some celestial body sent it on a different trajectory. Experts called it a rare event that happens once every eight million years.

Currently, there are three NASA orbiters that monitor Mars: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Odyssey, and MAVEN, which recently arrived. There is also the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, which are equipped the cameras and measuring instruments to learn more about Earth’s neighboring planet.

MAVEN is an acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, and it was designed to study the atmosphere of the planet using its Imagine Ultraviolet Spectrograph to detect changes in dust. It was able to detect eight ionized metals from the comet: sodium, magnesium, potassium, chromium, manganese, iron, nickel, and zinc.