The physical properties of cometary nuclei observed today relate to their complex history and help to constrain their formation and evolution. In this article, we review some of the main physical properties of cometary nuclei and focus in particular on the thermal, mechanical, structural and dielectric properties, emphasising the progress made during the Rosetta mission. Comets have a low density of 480 220 kg m -3 and a low permittivity of 1.9-2.0, consistent with a high porosity of 70-80%, are weak with a very low global tensile strength < 100 Pa, and have a low bulk thermal inertia of 0-60 J K -1 m -2 s -1/2 that allowed them to preserve highly volatiles species (e.g. CO, CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 ) into their interior
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Groussin et al. (2019) studied this question.