  The Great Nebula in Carina provides an exceptional view into the violent
massive star formation and feedback that typifies giant HII regions and
starburst galaxies. We have mapped the Carina star-forming complex in X-rays,
using archival Chandra data and a mosaic of 20 new 60ks pointings using the
Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer, as a testbed for
understanding recent and ongoing star formation and to probe Carina's regions
of bright diffuse X-ray emission. This study has yielded a catalog of
properties of >14,000 X-ray point sources; >9800 of them have multiwavelength
counterparts. Using Chandra's unsurpassed X-ray spatial resolution, we have
separated these point sources from the extensive, spatially-complex diffuse
emission that pervades the region; X-ray properties of this diffuse emission
suggest that it traces feedback from Carina's massive stars. In this
introductory paper, we motivate the survey design, describe the Chandra
observations, and present some simple results, providing a foundation for the
15 papers that follow in this Special Issue and that present detailed catalogs,
methods, and science results.
