Pandora is the name of Saturn’s small moon discovered in 1980 and identified in images from Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 photographed Pandora near Saturn’s F ring during its 1980 encounter with the planet. The moon is an inner satellite and acts as one of the gravitational shepherds associated with the narrow F ring; the other is Prometheus. Their orbital interactions help shape and perturb the ring’s structure.
Pandora is irregularly shaped and has a relatively low density, consistent with a porous icy body. Its surface includes impact craters and bright material, features studied through spacecraft images and later observations. The name follows a common astronomical tradition of drawing from mythology, pairing Pandora with the nearby moon Prometheus.
This astronomical Pandora is separate from both Hesiod’s mythological character and the moon in Avatar. The names are connected by cultural reference, but Saturn’s Pandora is a real natural satellite. Its discovery also made the Pandora–Prometheus pairing especially recognizable in planetary science.