GLAST Large Area Telescope was proposed to NASA in 1999 as a follow-up of EGRET on-board Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory by an international collaboration. The proposal has been approved as a part of the GLAST observatory mission in its capability to explore a wide range of astrophysics with 5–40 times higher sensitivity and extended energy coverage (20MeV to 300GeV) than EGRET. The instrument consists of 16 towers of e+e- pair tracker, 16 blocks of segmented electro-magnetic calorimeter, and a set of anti-coicidence plastic scintillator tiles covering the tracker towers. It will have 5–10 times larger on-axis effective area, 6 times wider field-of-view (FOV), and up to 5 times better angular resolution when compared with EGRET. The Large Area Telescope will cover about 40% of the sky above the Earth's horizon in its FOV at any given time and will scan nearly the entire Universe every orbit (∼ 90min): about 20% of Gamma-Ray Bursts will be observed from the onset of the bursts to the initial after-glow phase; all longer-lasting transients and variabilities will be detected daily at the improved sensitivity. The instrument has been prototyped twice between 1995 and 2001, designed almost to the Flight Model by the international collaboration of the US (NASA and DoE), France, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. The first prototype consisted of one tower of e+e- pair trackers, one block of segmented calorimeters and a smaller set of anti-coicidence plastic scintillator tiles (Beam Test Engineering Model, BTEM), which was put into e +, p, and γ beams at SLAC in the winter of 1999–2000. It was subsequently modified for a balloon experiment (Balloon Flight Engineering Model, BFEM) and flown at Palestine, Texas in August 2001. Data collected in the test experiments have been analyzed and compared with predictions of computer simulation codes such as Geant4. These studies have confirmed validity of the basic design, brought up a few issues for further improvement, and gathered data on the cosmic-ray background expected in the orbit. All subsystems of GLAST-LAT are scheduled to be completed and come to SLAC in 2005 for integration. The integrated instrument will go through a set of tests before being integrated onto the spacecraft. The spacecraft will be put into a Low Earth Orbit (altitude ∼ 450–550km) in the fall of 2006 and the LAT will begin collecting data after the commissiong phase. The astronomical gamma-ray data collected in the observation will be processed by the LAT team and archived for public use GLAST Science Support Center at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.