In the Avatar film universe, Pandora is a moon.
Pandora is the inhabited moon where most of James Cameron’s Avatar takes place. It orbits the fictional gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri star system. The moon’s dense forests, floating mountains, and rich biological networks form the setting for the Na’vi characters and the human extraction operation.
Pandora’s classification matters because it is not the Earth-like planet of the story. It is a moon with its own ecosystems and atmosphere, although the atmosphere is hazardous to unprotected humans. The film’s world-building gives Pandora a complex biosphere rather than treating it as a simple barren satellite.
This fictional Pandora is unrelated to the container in Greek mythology except by name. The name deliberately evokes the idea of a world containing unknown wonders and dangers, while the film uses it for a scientifically imagined extraterrestrial environment.