Keck Infrared Transient Survey Data Release 1

<p>We present the first data release from&nbsp;the Keck Infrared Transient Survey (KITS), a NASA Key Strategic Mission Support program to obtain near-infrared (NIR) spectra of astrophysical transients of all types.&nbsp;This&nbsp;data release&nbsp;consists&nbsp;of 105 NIR spectra of 50 transients.&nbsp;As we are entering a new era of infrared astronomy with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman), KITS provides a large, publicly available sample of IR spectroscopy for a wide range of transients. These data will be essential to search JWST&nbsp;images for stellar explosions of the first stars and to plan an effective&nbsp;Roman&nbsp;SN Ia cosmology survey, both key science objectives for mission success. The first data release represents the first semester, which is one third of the full survey. We systematically observed three samples: a flux-limited sample that includes all transients brighter than 17~mag in a red optical band (usually ZTF r&nbsp;or ATLAS o&nbsp;bands); a volume-limited sample including all transients within redshift z &lt; 0.01; and an SN Ia sample targeting objects at phases and light-curve parameters that had scant existing NIR data in the literature. Please see the accompanying paper where we&nbsp;describe our observing procedures and data reduction using an automated pipeline pypeit with minimal human interaction to ensure reproducibility. In this dataset, we provide telluric-corrected spectra of the transient in CSV format. We also provide&nbsp;one-dimensional extracted spectra of transients and telluric standard stars in FITS format from pypeit. Users can use these&nbsp;intermediate data products to redo telluric correction if desired.</p>