Consumer electronic products are getting smaller. Electronic systems in new cars and trucks are more prevalent. The aerospace and defense industries are also tightening environmental specifications as designs become smaller and more versatile. These trends require that the instrumentation used in all phases of development – design, debug, and validation – work well in increasingly severe environments. These environments especially pose challenges for oscilloscopes and probes. The probe challenges are due to drastic temperature swings, difficult to access or tiny DUTs (devices under test), as well as some mechanical considerations. The good news is that with some care, a simple understanding of what to expect in these extreme environments, and with a measure of common sense, it’s possible to make high quality reliable measurements using readily available probes and accessories. Extreme probing can be thought of as any probing situation in which, without proper consideration, it’s possible to cause damage to probes and accessories, or make an unreliable or poor measurement. Common hacks that engineers use to make these measurements often have dire consequences when it comes to signal integrity. Other extreme situations can lead to probe failure, no matter what steps are taken. In these cases there are several strategies that can help extend probe life as long as possible. Let’s examine some of these situations. Introduction