Pandora is the Saturnian moon discovered by Voyager 1 that shares its name with the mythological Pandora. Voyager 1 images revealed the moon in 1980, and it was later named for the figure from Greek mythology.
Pandora is a small irregular moon that acts as an outer shepherd satellite of Saturn’s narrow F ring. Its gravitational influence helps shape and confine material in that ring, alongside the moon Prometheus. This makes Pandora important in studies of ring dynamics, not merely a mythological namesake.
The moon is often confused with asteroid 55 Pandora, discovered in 1858. They are separate objects: one orbits Saturn and the other orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt. Pandora is also distinct from Prometheus and Epimetheus, whose names come from related figures in the Greek myth but refer to different Saturnian moons.