The Status and Prospects of MINOS/NuMI

The MINOS experiment is designed to measure properties of neutrino oscillations. A neutrino beam generated by the NuMI facility at Fermilab is directed towards the Soudan mine, located 735km away in Minnesota. A comparison of the observed neutrino events at the Near Detector at Fermilab and at the Far Detector in the mine gives a precise measurement of the oscillation parameters. The NuMI primary beam line is designed to transport up to $4 \times 10^{13}$ protons to the MINOS target every 2 seconds to generate a neutrino beam for the experiment. The final alignment and tuning of the NuMI beam line is being completed and the beam line is expected to be fully commissioned by early spring of this year. Both of the MINOS detectors have been installed and are ready for taking data with the neutrino beam. The Far Detector is already accumulating significant amounts of atmospheric neutrino data. This talk will present the status of MINOS and NuMI, and the anticipated first signals from neutrino beam data.