  The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) is a second-generation VLT
panoramic integral-field spectrograph currently in manufacturing, assembly and
integration phase. MUSE has a field of 1x1 arcmin2 sampled at 0.2x0.2 arcsec2
and is assisted by the VLT ground layer adaptive optics ESO facility using four
laser guide stars. The instrument is a large assembly of 24 identical high
performance integral field units, each one composed of an advanced image
slicer, a spectrograph and a 4kx4k detector. In this paper we review the
progress of the manufacturing and report the performance achieved with the
first integral field unit.
