The main-belt asteroid named after the mythological Pandora is numbered 55. Its full designation is 55 Pandora, and it is a relatively large asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
55 Pandora was discovered by the American astronomer George Mary Searle at the Albany Observatory in New York in 1858. The name refers to Pandora of Greek mythology, continuing the nineteenth-century practice of assigning classical names to newly identified asteroids.
The number 55 records the asteroid’s position in the sequence of numbered minor planets, not its size or discovery year. It is therefore distinct from Pandora, the moon of Saturn, which was discovered much later by spacecraft imaging.
Astronomers classify 55 Pandora as an S-type asteroid, meaning its surface is broadly associated with stony, silicate-rich material. Its mythological name connects it to the same figure as Saturn’s moon, but the two objects occupy very different environments.