The Cassini spacecraft photographed Saturn's moon Pandora during its closest flyby in 2010. NASA's Cassini mission spent more than a decade studying Saturn, its rings, and its moons after entering orbit in 2004.
Cassini made a close approach to Pandora on June 3, 2010. The encounter produced detailed images and measurements of the small, irregular moon, which is an outer shepherd of Saturn's F ring. Cassini observations helped researchers examine Pandora's shape, surface, and relationship with nearby Prometheus.
Voyager 1 originally discovered Pandora in 1980, but Cassini later provided far more opportunities for close observation. The mission also carried the Huygens probe, which landed on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005. Cassini was deliberately sent into Saturn's atmosphere in 2017 to avoid contaminating potentially habitable moons.