Voyager 1 discovered Saturn’s moon Pandora in photographs taken during its 1980 flyby.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft encountered Saturn in November 1980 after launching in 1977. Scientists examining images from the encounter identified Pandora as a previously unknown small moon. Its discovery is generally dated to October 1980 because the relevant images were obtained before the closest approach and analyzed afterward.
Pandora is irregularly shaped and only a few dozen kilometres across. It travels near Saturn’s narrow F ring, where its gravity contributes to the ring’s shepherding system. Prometheus, another small moon, works with Pandora to influence the ring’s particles.
The later Cassini mission produced much more detailed observations of Pandora, but Cassini did not discover it. Voyager 2 also visited Saturn, yet Voyager 1 was the spacecraft responsible for Pandora’s discovery.