The early results from the Rosetta mission are in, and they reveal that comets are much more complicated than anyone realized.

In a flurry of papers published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers provide the first data-driven snapshot of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko a world of towering cliffs, wide basins, powdery surfaces blacker than coal, and a growing atmosphere that will soon be strong enough to deflect the solar wind.

The picture is starting to come together, said Paul Weissman of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an interdisciplinary scientist on the European Space Agency-led mission.

A few other spacecraft have flown past comets, but Rosetta is the first to travel alongside one as it makes its way to perihelion, the moment when it is closest to the sun. Comet 67P will reach that milestone in the middle of August.

When the suite of instruments aboard Rosetta first started taking measurements of 67P, the dumbbell-shaped comet was more than 325 million miles from the sun. At that distance, on the other side of the asteroid belt, it was too faint to see from ground-based telescopes.

We don't have a lot of previous observations of comets in that part of the solar system," Weissman said. We are exploring unknown territory.

Most of the findings reported in Science are based on data collected between April and September, when Rosetta was still sailing toward 67P, and months before a lander carried by Rosetta, known as Philae, maneuvered to a nail-biting arrival upon the comets surface.

Each of the seven Science papers describes a different aspect of the comet, including observations of the size and density of the dust in its coma and the composition of the organic material on its surface.

One of the papers reveals that jets of gas streaming off the comet are coming primarily from the neck region.

In another report, researchers identified 19 distinct geographical areas on 67P that have been named for Egyptian deities, including Ma'at, Imhotep, Aten and Ash.

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Goosebumps, cliffs, basins, pits: What Rosetta has seen so far