The main-belt asteroid named Pandora has the catalog number 55. Its official designation is 55 Pandora, meaning it was the 55th asteroid to receive a permanent numbered designation.
George Mary Searle discovered Pandora on September 10, 1858, from the Albany Observatory in New York. The asteroid was later named after Pandora from Greek mythology, continuing the tradition of assigning mythological names to many early minor planets.
55 Pandora is a stony S-type asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is much smaller than a planet and is not related physically to Saturn’s moon Pandora, despite sharing the same mythological name.
Asteroid numbers record the order in which objects received permanent designations, not their size or distance from the Sun. Thus, the number 55 does not mean Pandora is the 55th-largest asteroid or the 55th object from the Sun.