Abstract: Tremendous new insights into the Martian atmosphere have been achieved in recent years by two ultraviolet spectrographs built at LASP: the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) aboard the Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, and the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) aboard the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM). Both instruments have far exceeded their design goals in science return. This has been accomplished in part through opportunistic and innovative observations not in the original concept of operations. In this talk I will give a high-level summary of how we observe Mars in the ultraviolet and share several examples of ground-breaking experiments that these instruments were not quite designed to perform.