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M.E. Brown (Caltech)
Our current understanding of the Kuiper belt is similar to that of the asteroid belt before the 1970s: we are beginning to acquire a detailed knowledge of the populations and dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt, but we know little of the properties of individual bodies. This lack of knowledge has largely been caused by the extreme faintness of the objects themselves. Recent large-area surveys, however, have begun to uncover KBOs bright enough to allowed detailed study, allowing us to begin a program of infrared spectroscopy of the brightest members of the Kuiper belt. Our hope is that this program will allow advances in the understanding of KBO compositions equivalent to those made in the 1970s that began our modern understanding of asteroid spectral classes and distributions. We will present early results from the program including Keck spectra of the KBOs 1996 TP66, 1999 RZ253, 1999 TC36, 1999 TD10, and 2000 EB173.