Saturn’s moon Pandora was discovered in 1980.
Voyager 1 images revealed Pandora, making it one of the small satellites identified during the spacecraft’s exploration of the Saturn system. The moon is an outer shepherd satellite of Saturn’s narrow F ring, meaning its gravitational influence helps shape and confine ring material.
Pandora is irregularly shaped and heavily cratered. It is much smaller than Saturn’s major moons, and its name comes from the mythological Pandora rather than from a direct connection between the moon and the ancient story.
The moon was discovered in images obtained by Voyager 1, whose Saturn encounter occurred in November 1980. It is sometimes discussed together with Prometheus, another small shepherd moon whose name creates a deliberate mythological pairing with Pandora.