NASA’s Voyager 1 first photographed Saturn’s moon Pandora in 1980. The spacecraft encountered the Saturn system that year and returned the images that led to Pandora’s discovery.
Pandora is a small outer shepherd moon of Saturn’s narrow F ring. Voyager 1 images revealed the satellite on October 31, 1980, and it was formally announced soon afterward. The moon is irregularly shaped and measures only a few dozen kilometres across, making it far smaller and harder to detect than Saturn’s major moons.
Pandora’s orbit helps influence the F ring, together with the nearby moon Prometheus. These two moons are called shepherd satellites because their gravity helps shape and confine the ring’s material. Pandora’s name continues a mythological naming pattern used for many bodies in the Saturn system.
The discovery year can be confused with Voyager 1’s launch year, 1977, or its later encounter with Uranus, which occurred in 1986. Voyager 1 launched in 1977 but reached Saturn three years later.