  The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is a strategic R&D project
intended to demonstrate the only practical solution to providing high
brilliance beams necessary for a neutrino factory or muon collider. MICE is
under development at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the United
Kingdom. It comprises a dedicated beamline to generate a range of input muon
emittances and momenta, with time-of-flight and Cherenkov detectors to ensure a
pure muon beam. The emittance of the incoming beam will be measured in the
upstream magnetic spectrometer with a scintillating fiber tracker. A cooling
cell will then follow, alternating energy loss in Liquid Hydrogen (LH2)
absorbers to RF cavity acceleration. A second spectrometer, identical to the
first, and a second muon identification system will measure the outgoing
emittance. In the 2010 run at RAL the muon beamline and most detectors were
fully commissioned and a first measurement of the emittance of the muon beam
with particle physics (time-of-flight) detectors was performed. The analysis of
these data was recently completed and is discussed in this paper. Future steps
for MICE, where beam emittance and emittance reduction (cooling) are to be
measured with greater accuracy, are also presented.
