Status of the Soft X-Ray Free Electron Laser FLASH

The superconducting free-electron laser user facility FLASH at DESY in Hamburg, routinely produces several thousand photon pulses per second. The operational parameters cover a wavelength range from 90 nm down to 4 nm with pulse energies from several $\mu$J up to 1 mJ and with pulse durations of several hundred fs down to a few fs. The FLASH injector and linac drives two undulator beam lines (FLASH1, FLASH2) and therefore FLASH is capable of serving 2 independent experiments with photon pulse (sub-) trains of several 100 bunches at the full train repetition frequency of 10 Hz.We summarize here the highlights of the user operation at FLASH1/2 and the study program (machine development and FEL optimization) of the FLASH facility