Pandora is the Saturn moon discovered in 1980 and named after a character from the Greek Pandora myth.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft photographed Pandora on October 31, 1980. The moon is an outer shepherd satellite of Saturn’s narrow F ring, where its gravity helps influence the ring’s structure. Prometheus, another moon named from the same mythological tradition, acts as the inner shepherd of the F ring.
Pandora is an irregular, low-density body with a heavily cratered surface. It is much smaller than Saturn’s major moons, and its shape and composition reflect the porous, icy nature common among many small outer satellites.
The name can create confusion because Pandora is also the name of an asteroid, a film, a fictional character, and the mythological woman. In planetary science, “Pandora” without a number normally refers to Saturn’s moon, while “55 Pandora” refers to the asteroid.