How cold is it on Mars? Now you can track the red planet's weather online

If you think the temperature swings in your part of the country are bad these days,rest assured:they don't even approach those on Mars. As of Tuesday, you can track them and compare.

NASA's newest lander is offering daily reports on the red planet's frigid winter.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is posting the highs and lows online, along with wind speed and atmospheric pressure from the InSight lander.

To give you a roughidea of what it's registered already, on Sunday its most recent date available InSight recorded a high of -17 Cand a low of-95 C.

NASA saidInSight is designed to collect and send back these daily weather reports for the next two years, so that scientists can study seasonalchanges.

"It gives you the sense of visiting an alien place," said Cornell University's Don Banfieldwho leads InSight's weather sciencein a release. "Mars has familiar atmospheric phenomena that are still quite different than those on Earth."

But there is a bigger goal, too. Scientists need to know the local Mars weather to determine if InSight's seismometer is registering real earthquakes on Mars (also known asmarsquakes) or simply wind or pressure changes.

InSight landed near the Mars equator in November. NASA's Curiosity rover also gives weather updates, while roaming around Mars about 550 kilometres away.