Voyager 1 first discovered Saturn’s moon Pandora in images taken during its 1980 encounter.
The moon was identified in photographs returned by Voyager 1 during its flyby of Saturn in 1980. It is a small, irregular satellite that orbits near Saturn’s narrow F ring and helps influence the ring’s structure through gravitational interactions.
Pandora’s name was officially approved in 1985. It comes from the figure in Greek mythology and follows the convention of naming many Saturnian moons after mythological characters.
Cassini later provided much more detailed observations of Pandora and Saturn’s rings, which can cause confusion about the discovery credit. Cassini studied Saturn from orbit beginning in 2004, but Voyager 1 was the probe that first revealed Pandora in spacecraft imagery.