Voyager 1 photographed Saturn’s moon Pandora during its discovery in 1980.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft returned images from its Saturn encounter that revealed Pandora as a previously unknown satellite. The moon received a provisional designation before being formally named. Its discovery added another small body to Saturn’s intricate system of rings and moons.
Voyager 2 also visited Saturn, but it was not the spacecraft credited with discovering Pandora. Galileo explored Jupiter and its moons, while Cassini later conducted an extensive Saturn mission and provided much more detailed observations of Pandora and the F ring.
The discovery illustrates how planetary moons can be found through spacecraft imaging rather than only from Earth-based telescopes. Pandora is small and close to Saturn’s bright rings, making spacecraft observations especially useful for distinguishing it from the surrounding ring material.