The asteroid Pandora, discovered in 1858, has the Minor Planet Center designation 55 Pandora. It is a main-belt asteroid named after Pandora from Greek mythology and was the 55th asteroid to receive a permanent number in the historical numbering sequence.
George Mary Searle discovered Pandora on September 10, 1858, at the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York. The object orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Its name shows how classical mythology supplied names for many nineteenth-century astronomical discoveries.
55 Pandora is unrelated to Saturn’s moon Pandora, which was discovered much later in Voyager 1 images. The asteroid and the moon share a mythological name but differ in location, discovery history, and physical classification. This distinction prevents the asteroid’s number from being confused with a spacecraft date or satellite designation.