The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS): Project Overview

The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS) began in August 2013 as a multi-year physical characterization survey that was awarded survey status by NOAO. MANOS will target several hundred mission-accessible NEOs across visible and near-infrared wavelengths, ultimately providing a comprehensive catalog of physical properties (astrometry, light curves, spectra). Particular focus is paid to sub-km NEOs, for which little data currently exists. These small bodies are essential to understanding the link between meteorites and asteroids, pose the most immediate impact hazard to the Earth, and are highly relevant to a variety of planetary mission scenarios. Accessing these targets is enabled through a combination of classical, queue, and target-of-opportunity observations carried out at 1- to 8-meter class facilities in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The MANOS observing strategy is specifically designed to rapidly characterize newly discovered NEOs before they fade beyond observational limits. MANOS will provide major advances in our understanding of the NEO population as a whole and for specific objects of interest. Here we present an overview of the survey, progress to date, and early science highlights including: (1) an estimate of the taxonomic distribution of spectral types for NEOs smaller than ~100 meters, (2) the distribution of rotational properties for approximately 100 previously unstudied objects, (3) models for the dynamical evolution of the overall NEO population over the past 0.5 Myr, and (4) progress in developing a new set of online tools at asteroid.lowell.edu that will enable near realtime public dissemination of our data while providing a portal to facilitate coordination efforts within the small body observer community.MANOS is supported through telescope allocations from NOAO and Lowell Observatory. We acknowledge funding support from an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to N. Moskovitz and NASA NEOO grant number NNX14AN82G (PI N. Moskovitz).