  COMPASS is a new fixed target experiment presently in operation at CERN. It
has the goal to investigate hadron structure and hadron spectroscopy by using
either muon or hadron beams. From measurements of various hadron asymmetries in
polarized muon - nucleon scattering it will be possible to determine the
contribution of the gluons to the nucleon spin. Main objective of the hadron
program is the search of exotic states, and glueballs in particular. This
physics programme is carried out with a two-stage magnetic spectrometer, with
particle identification and calorimetry in both stages, which has started
collecting physics data in 2002, and will run at the CERN SPS at least until
2010. Preliminary results from the 2002 run with a 160 GeV muon beam are
presented for several physics channels under investigation.
