The CMS Detector: Status and Prospects

The CMS Detector is one of two large general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider. After more than fifteen years of design, development, and construction, CMS took its first data as a unified detector in 2006, triggering and recording cosmic muons through a complete slice of the detector. The detector is currently undergoing final assembly in its underground cavern in preparation for collision data at the end of 2007. In this talk, I will discuss the design of the CMS detector and its performance in the cosmic ray test as well as for the physics topics we will study in the first years of the LHC program including the prospects for Higgs and supersymmetry searches.