  The new VISual and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) has started
operations. Over its first five years it will be collecting data for six public
surveys, one of these is the near-infrared YJKsVISTA survey of the Magellanic
Clouds system (VMC). This survey comprises the LMC, the SMC, the Bridge
connecting the two galaxies and two fields in the Stream. This paper provides
an overview of the VMC survey strategy and presents first science results. The
main goals of the VMC survey are the determination of the spatially resolved
SFH and 3D structure of the Magellanic system. Therefore, the VMC survey is
designed to reach stars as faint as the oldest main sequence turn-off point and
to constrain the mean magnitude of pulsating variable stars such as RR Lyrae
stars and Cepheids. This paper focuses on observations of VMC fields in the LMC
obtained between November 2009 and March 2010. These observations correspond to
a 7% completeness of the LMC fields. The VMC observations consist of
multi-epoch measurements organised following a specific structure. The data
were reduced using the VISTA Data Flow System pipeline whose source catalogues
were produced and made available via the VISTA Science Archive. The analysis of
the data shows that the sensitivity in each wave band agrees with expectations.
Uncertainties and completeness of the data are also derived. The first science
results, aimed at assessing the science quality of the VMC data, include an
overview of the distribution of stars in colour-magnitude and colour-colour
diagrams, the detection of planetary nebulae and of stellar clusters, and the
Ks band light-curve of variable stars. The VMC survey represents a tremendous
improvement, in spatial resolution and sensitivity, on previous panoramic
observations of the Magellanic system in the near-infrared and complements
nicely the deep observations at other wavelengths. (Abridged)
