The Kepler mission has shown that small planets are extremely common. It is likely that nearly every star in the sky hosts at least one rocky planet. We just need to look hard enough - but this requires vast amounts of telescope time. MINERVA (MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array) is a dedicated exoplanet observatory with the primary goal of discovering rocky, Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of bright, nearby stars. The MINERVA team is a collaboration among UNSW Australia, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Penn State University, University of Montana, and the California Institute of Technology. The four-telescope MINERVA array will be sited at the F.L. Whipple Observatory on Mt Hopkins in Arizona, USA. Full science operations will begin in mid-2015 with all four telescopes and a stabilised spectrograph capable of high-precision Doppler velocity measurements. We will observe ~100 of the nearest, brightest, Sun-like stars every night for at least five years. Detailed simulations of the target list and survey strategy lead us to expect 154 new low-mass planets.

ABSTRACT
1. INTRODUCTION
2. MINERVA OVERVIEW
3. MINERVA SCIENCE PROGRAMMES
    3.1. High-cadence Radial-velocity Observations
    3.2. Transit Photometry
4. PROJECT STATUS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
REFERENCES

• Robert A. Wittenmyer(School of Physics and Australian Centre for Astrobiology, UNSW Australia)
• John Asher Johnson(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
• Jason Wright(Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University)
• Nate McCrady(Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Montana)
• Jonathan Swift(California Institute of Technology)
• Michael Bottom(California Institute of Technology)
• Peter Plavchan(Department of Physics Astronomy and Materials Science, Missouri State University)
• Reed Riddle(California Institute of Technology)
• Philip S. Muirhead(Department of Astronomy, Boston University)
• Erich Herzig(California Institute of Technology)
• Justin Myles(Department of Astronomy, Yale University)
• Cullen H. Blake(The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Physics and Astronomy)
• Jason Eastman(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
• Thomas G. Beatty(Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University)
• Brian Lin(California Institute of Technology)
• Ming Zhao(Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University)
• Paul Gardner(California Institute of Technology)
• Emilio Falco(Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
• Stephen Criswell(Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
• Chantanelle Nava(Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Montana)
• Connor Robinson(Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Montana)
• Richard Hedrick(PlaneWave Instruments Inc.)
• Kevin Ivarsen(PlaneWave Instruments Inc.)
• Annie Hjelstrom(Las Cumbres Global Observatory Telescope)
• Jon de Vera(Las Cumbres Global Observatory Telescope)
• Andrew Szentgyorgyi(Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)