  The NA61/SHINE experiment aims to discover the critical point of strongly
interacting matter and study properties of the onset of deconfinement. These
goals are to be achieved by performing a two dimensional phase diagram
($T$-$\mu_{B}$) scan - measurements of hadron production properties in
proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus interactions as a function of
collision energy and system size. This contribution summarizes current the
status and future plans as well as presents the first physics results of the
NA61/SHINE ion program.
