  SPIRE, the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver, is one of three
instruments to fly on ESA's Herschel Space Observatory. It contains a
three-band imaging photometer operating at 250, 360 and 520 microns, and an
imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) covering 200-670 microns. It will
be used for many extragalactic science programmes, a number of which will be
implemented as Herschel Key Projects. The SPIRE consortium's Guaranteed Time
(GT) programme will devote more than 1000 hours to Key Projects covering the
high-z universe and local galaxies. It is also expected that substantial
amounts of Herschel Open Time will be used for further extragalactic
investigations. The high-z part of the SPIRE GT programme will focus on
blank-field surveys with a range of depths and areas optimised to sample the
luminosity-redshift plane and characterise the bolometric luminosity density of
the universe at high z. Fields will be selected that are well covered at other
wavelengths to facilitate source identifications and enable detailed studies of
the redshifts, spectral energy distributions, and infrared properties of
detected galaxies. The local galaxies programme will include a detailed
spectral and photometric study of a sample of well resolved nearby galaxies, a
survey of more than 300 local galaxies designed to provide a statistical survey
of dust in the nearby universe, and a study of the ISM in low-metallicity
environments, bridging the gap between the local universe and primordial
galaxies.
