Abstract :
The Bates Large Acceptance Spectrometer Toroid (BLAST) is a detector designed to study the spin-dependent electromagnetic response of few-body nuclei at momentum transfers up to 1 (GeV/c)2 at the MIT-Bates Linear Accelerator Centerʹs South Hall Ring (SHR). The BLAST detector consists of an eight-sector copper coil array producing a toroidal magnetic field, instrumented with two opposing wedge-shaped sectors of wire chambers, scintillation detectors, Cerenkov counters, neutron detectors, a lead-glass forward calorimeter, and recoil detectors. A status of the project is presented as well as highlights of the scientific program.