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The LSST will carry out a six-band multi-epoch optical survey over half the Celestial Sphere using a dedicated 8.4-meter telescope, allowing major advances in areas ranging from the study of near-Earth asteroids to the nature of Dark Energy. The Science Collaborations are autonomous entities that will work closely with the LSST construction project on areas from cadence design to commissioning. LSST was ranked #1 by the Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010 Decadal Survey for large ground-based projects. Science operations will begin six years after the start of construction.

Our knowledge of inflation, or whatever process generated the initial departures from homogeneity, comes almost entirely through our inference of the power spectrum of these initial departures. The CMB has been a powerful probe, but there are two ways in which LSST can improve upon the CMB: by using cosmic shear to extend to smaller scales and by using the power spectrum of the galaxies themselves to improve the determination of the primordial power spectrum on very large scales.

To quantify the NEO threat to Earth, we present excerpts from the Binzel Committee report to the Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee:

Realization of the fundamental role played by near-Earth object (NEO) impacts in shaping our planetary history is arguably the most profound legacy of twentieth century planetary exploration. Although concern over terrestrial impacts can be traced at least as far back as Halley (1705), modern recognition of the impact hazard has been most profoundly influenced by a broad range of interdisciplinary results, including:

Why will Rubin Observatory look for NEOs?

December, 2005, Congress directed NASA to implement a near-Earth object (NEO) survey that would catalog 90% of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). The objectives of the George E. Brown, Jr. NEO Survey Act (Public Law No. 109-155) are to detect, track, catalog, and characterize the physical characteristics of PHAs equal to or larger than 140 meters in diameter that come within 1.3 astronomical units (AU) or less from the Sun at closest approach.

Previous astronomical surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have enabled us to draw an ever-finer picture of the Milky Way and its neighborhood, called the Local Group. For example, survey data have revealed numerous stellar streams in our galaxy’s halo, as well as dozens of small dwarf galaxies.

Data from Rubin Observatory will further refine the image of our home galaxy, in the process redefining it as a laboratory where studies of galaxy growth and evolution can take place on a grander scale. 

Astronomers who study the growth and evolution of galaxies would seem to have an advantage over colleagues who study such topics as black holes or the Big Bang. After all, our sun, considered a fairly typical star, is a member of the Milky Way—a fairly typical spiral galaxy. And as a fairly typical galaxy, the Milky Way should serve as an example for the general study of the growth and development of galaxies throughout the universe.

Rubin Observatory will undertake a thorough exploration of our Solar System with two goals in mind: learning how it originally formed, and protecting Earth from hazardous, near-flying asteroids.

Throughout recorded history, humans have observed the changing heavens: astronomical objects that appear suddenly and then fade from view, or that simply change their brightness over time. Though these transient and variable phenomena were once considered portents of disaster, we now know them as examples of time domain astronomy, or the study of our changing cosmos.

We are at an exciting time in the study of the vast, mostly unexplored region of the Solar System beyond Neptune. Over the last two decades, less than two thousand small bodies have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt, ranging in size from a few tens of kilometers to several thousand kilometers across (for example, Pluto and Eris).