Philae, the little lost lander that the European Space Agency dropped on a comet last November, is still lost.

Although it woke up last month and has made contact several times with the Rosetta orbiter, which is examining Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from miles away, Philae has not been heard from for more than two weeks, and the sporadic communications have not been long enough for the lander to resume its scientific work.

But even the 60 hours of observations it conducted immediately after landing have provided an intriguing wealth of data about the composition, structure and properties of the comet, described in detail in seven papers published Thursday by the journal Science.

Jean-Pierre Bibring, the lead scientist for the Philae lander, highlighted the discovery of large dark grains, a millimeter or more wide, which appeared to be made of complex light-absorbing organic molecules. “This is fundamental,” Dr. Bibring said. “We didn’t know that.”