The Status of the CMS Experiment at the LHC

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment was commissioned and ready for first LHC beams in September 2008. Muons from beam splash, beam halo, and cosmic rays have provided valuable data for alignment and calibration, detector performance studies and for testing numerous aspects of offline software and computing. The first maintenance cycle is complete, and while eagerly anticipating the first LHC collisions, we also recall the CMS collaboration’s physics studies based on simulated data as a reminder of the exciting possibilities in the near future.