Pandora is the name of Saturn’s small moon discovered in photographs from Voyager 1. The spacecraft photographed the moon in 1980, and it was later officially named Pandora after the figure from Greek mythology.
Pandora is an inner moon of Saturn and acts as an outer shepherd satellite of the planet’s narrow F ring. Its gravitational influence helps confine and shape the ring, working with the nearby moon Prometheus. This pairing explains why both mythological names appear in descriptions of Saturn’s ring system.
The moon is irregularly shaped and has a low density, consistent with a porous interior. It is not the same object as the fictional world called Pandora in the film Avatar, nor is it the source of the mythological expression “Pandora’s box.” Astronomers use mythological names for many planetary bodies, but each name refers to a separate scientific object.