If you are talking about the ground survey teams you make, then they have to make a colony. Teams are seen in the economics (F2) window and as such a colony is required to view a body there. Otherwise how will you keep track of what body has a team on them if they are simply in the big system view list on a quad system with hundreds of bodies in it?
As things stand you just have to make a new colony drop a team to it, do the survey then abandon the colony after if you do not want it cluttering up your colony list.
