In mid-December, the orbiter’s high-resolution camera took pictures of the spot where the scientists think the lander ended up, but the scientists were not able to find it — a few pixels in a four-million-pixel image.

Holger Sierks, the principal investigator for Rosetta’s main camera, said that Philae, which photographed its surroundings and performed various measurements after landing, was still expected to awake in the spring when increasing sunlight recharged the batteries. Even if Philae does not wake up, Rosetta should be able to spot it after the comet has made its closest approach to the sun, in August.

The high-resolution camera has taken photographs with a resolution as fine as two and a half feet per pixel. The comet, just two and a half miles wide with a two-lobe shape that resembles a rubber duck toy, has a remarkably wide variety of terrain. That includes smooth dust-covered regions, fields of boulders, steep cliffs and large depressions that may have been blown out by underground melting of carbon dioxide. The variety is surprising because many think the comet is, by and large, made of the same material throughout. Scientists are not sure if the shape comes from two smaller comets that bumped and stuck together or one large comet that eroded in an unusual manner.

On the surface of Comet 67P, there are even what look like ripples of sand dunes like those seen on Earth and Mars. That appears befuddling, as a comet has no atmosphere — and so no wind — and only a wisp of gravity.