  One of the important goals of the COMPASS experiment is the determination of
the gluonic contribution to the spin of the nucleon. By using the photon gluon
fusion (PGF) process in polarised deep inelastic scattering direct access to
the gluon polarisation can be obtained. The PGF is selected via the detection
of open charm or high $p_T$ hadron pairs. In 2001 a large part of the
experiment had been setup and during a two weeks period first data was taken.
In this paper some achievements of the run in 2001 are presented together with
first preliminary analysis results.
