The Mars96 mission towards plante Mars was to deliver an atmospheris balloon whose metallic guiderope contained a ground penetrating radar that was to sound the planet subsurface up to a one kilometre depth. The Mars96 balloon mission was postponed and then cancelled. This document presents and discusses most of the features of this new radar instrument. Some specific and original parts are described with more details. The performance evaluation, the matching of the instrument to the signals dynamics, and the evaluation of the available data amount build the last chapter of this dissertation.
