Pandora is the Saturn moon discovered in 1980 that shares its name with the mythological Pandora. Voyager 1 images revealed the satellite, and its discovery was announced after the spacecraft observed Saturn’s ring system.
Pandora is a small, irregularly shaped moon that acts as an outer shepherd satellite of Saturn’s narrow F ring. Together with Prometheus, it helps gravitationally influence the ring’s structure. Prometheus is the inner shepherd moon, while Pandora orbits farther from Saturn on the other side of the F ring.
The satellite’s name was chosen from Greek mythology, continuing the long astronomical tradition of naming moons and minor planets after mythological figures. Its name creates an especially close pairing with Prometheus, another figure from the Pandora story.
Pandora is sometimes mixed up with the asteroid 55 Pandora. The asteroid was discovered in 1858, while Saturn’s moon was identified in Voyager-era images in 1980. They are unrelated bodies with different orbits, sizes, and discovery histories, connected only by their shared mythological name.