Subsurface water search by TEM [on Mars]

This paper presents the project TESEO (TEM sounding for Geophysical Exploration) for planetary TEM (Time Electromagnetic Methods) survey, focused on the main issue of the search for water on Mars. The project aims to extend the TEM (largely and successfully employed on the Earth) to the planetary environment, where the many unknown variables (above all the background EM noise and the subsoil composition), together with the limited resources availability (mission constraints in mass, time and power) pose a formidable obstacle to performing operations and measurements. In such a context, we first investigated the opportunity for a TEM system to be housed as a payload in a future mission with special attention given to those ones deploying a network of carrier (landers, rovers, robots). Secondly, we evaluated the sounding capability of a TEM for a simple case study verifying the role played by the system and survey parameters.