A subsurface instrument to measure electrical soil properties

We propose an in-situ instrument that can determine local soil and subsoil electro-magnetic properties in future planetary missions. The existing laboratory model of the HP 3 Permittivity Probe (PP) is presented. Its ability to detect the electric prope rties of the local soil as well as structural properties has been already proven in laboratory tests. With relatively modest changes the instruments functionality could be increased to determine the electrical as well as the magnetic properties of th e surrounding media.