GLAST: physics goals and instrument status

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a space-based observatory scheduled to launch in October 2007 with two instruments: (1) the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), sensitive to photon energies between 8 keV and 25 MeV and optimized to detect gamma-ray bursts, and (2) the Large Area Telescope (LAT), sensitive to gamma rays between ~20 MeV and 300 GeV and designed to survey the gamma-ray sky with unprecedented sensitivity. We describe the LAT and the GBM. We then focus on the LAT's capabilities for studying active galactic nuclei