The Astronomical Journal, 140:770–784, 2010 September doi:10.1088/0004-6256/140/3/770 C 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. EXPLORENEOs. I. DESCRIPTION AND FIRST RESULTS FROM THE WARM SPITZER NEAR-EARTH OBJECT SURVEY D. E. Trilling1, M. Mueller2,J.L.Hora3, A. W. Harris4, B. Bhattacharya5, W. F. Bottke6, S. Chesley7, M. Delbo2, J. P. Emery8, G. Fazio3, A. Mainzer7, B. Penprase9,H.A.Smith3, T. B. Spahr3, J. A. Stansberry10, and C. A. Thomas1 1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA;
[email protected] 2 Observatoire de la Coteˆ d’Azur, Universite´ de Nice Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France 3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS-65, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 4 DLR Institute of Planetary Research, Rutherfordstrasse 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany 5 NASA Herschel Science Center, Caltech, M/S 100-22, 770 South Wilson Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 6 Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut Street, Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80302, USA 7 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA 8 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, 1412 Circle Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA 9 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Pomona College, 610 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, USA 10 Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA Received 2009 December 18; accepted 2010 July 6; published 2010 August 9 ABSTRACT We have begun the ExploreNEOs project in which we observe some 700 Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) at 3.6 and 4.5 μm with the Spitzer Space Telescope in its Warm Spitzer mode.