Voyager 1 discovered Saturn’s moon Pandora in images taken during its 1980 encounter with the planet.
Pandora is a small irregular moon of Saturn. Voyager 1 images revealed it in October 1980, and the moon was subsequently recognized as a satellite orbiting near Saturn’s narrow F ring. Its name comes from Pandora, the figure in Greek mythology associated with the famous container story.
The discovery is sometimes attributed to Voyager 2 because Voyager 2 also visited Saturn, but Voyager 1 reached the planet first and discovered Pandora. NASA’s Voyager 1 encounter took place in November 1980, while the discovery images were obtained earlier in the encounter sequence.
Pandora’s small size and irregular shape make it unlike Saturn’s large spherical moons such as Titan or Rhea. It is also one of the system’s shepherd moons: together with Prometheus, it helps influence the structure of the F ring. This astronomical Pandora therefore connects mythological naming with the dynamics of planetary rings.