  Massive early-type galaxies represent the modern-day remnants of the earliest
major star formation episodes in the history of the universe. These galaxies
are central to our understanding of the evolution of cosmic structure, stellar
populations, and supermassive black holes, but the details of their complex
formation histories remain uncertain. To address this situation, we have
initiated the MASSIVE Survey, a volume-limited, multi-wavelength,
integral-field spectroscopic (IFS) and photometric survey of the structure and
dynamics of the ~100 most massive early-type galaxies within a distance of 108
Mpc. This survey probes a stellar mass range M* > 10^{11.5} Msun and diverse
galaxy environments that have not been systematically studied to date. Our
wide-field IFS data cover about two effective radii of individual galaxies, and
for a subset of them, we are acquiring additional IFS observations on
sub-arcsecond scales with adaptive optics. We are also acquiring deep K-band
imaging to trace the extended halos of the galaxies and measure accurate total
magnitudes. Dynamical orbit modeling of the combined data will allow us to
simultaneously determine the stellar, black hole, and dark matter halo masses.
The primary goals of the project are to constrain the black hole scaling
relations at high masses, investigate systematically the stellar initial mass
function and dark matter distribution in massive galaxies, and probe the
late-time assembly of ellipticals through stellar population and kinematical
gradients. In this paper, we describe the MASSIVE sample selection, discuss the
distinct demographics and structural and environmental properties of the
selected galaxies, and provide an overview of our basic observational program,
science goals and early survey results.
