Saturn’s moon Pandora was discovered by Voyager 1 in 1980.
Voyager 1 images revealed Pandora on October Pandora is a small irregular moon of Saturn associated with the planet’s F ring. Its discovery was made during Voyager 1’s flyby of the Saturn system, which produced major advances in knowledge of Saturn’s rings and moons.
Pandora is one of the small moons that helps shape the structure of Saturn’s ring environment. It is sometimes described as a shepherd satellite because its gravity contributes to the confinement and organization of ring material, although the detailed dynamics of the F ring involve more than one moon and are not perfectly simple.
The year is easy to confuse with the Voyager missions’ launch dates. Voyager 1 launched in 1977, reached Saturn in 1980 and discovered Pandora during that Saturn encounter. Pandora should also not be confused with the much larger mythological or fictional uses of the name.