  The NA61/SHINE experiment aims to discover the critical point of strongly
interacting matter and study properties of the onset of deconfinement. It also
to performs precise hadron production measurements for the neutrino and cosmic
rays experiments. These goals will be achieved by measurements of hadron
production properties in nucleus-nucleus, proton-proton and proton-nucleus
interactions as a function of collision energy and size of the colliding
nuclei, as well as pion-nucleus interactions. This contribution summarises the
arguments of the ion program as well as presents the first physics results of
the NA61 experiment.
