Anyone around the world can now check the weather on the red planet with a few clicks thanks to a new tool unveiled by NASA.
The space agency's rover InSight is providing daily Mars weather reports, which are then posted online, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Tuesday.
On Sunday - the latest available date - the highest temperature on Mars was a brisk -17 degrees Celsius, and the lowest reached -95 degrees.
"It gives you the sense of visiting an alien place," said Don Banfield of Cornell University, who leads InSight's weather science department.
"Mars has familiar atmospheric phenomena that are still quite different than those on Earth."
InSight is also equipped with the first magnetometer to be placed on the surface of another planet. The tool measures changes in local magnetic fields.
The rover is scheduled to operate for at least the next two years.
The NASA spacecraft InSight landed on Mars in November, becoming the first probe from the US civilian space programme to land on the red planet in six years.
Australian Associated Press
