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On This Day in 1969: Apollo 12 Makes its Second Moon Landing
November 12, 2023 at 11:01 AM EST
By WeatherBug's Mark Skaggs
On this date in 1969, Apollo 12 makes its second moon landing. It was the sixth crewed flight in the U.S. Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon.
Apollo 12 was launched on November 14, 1969, by NASA from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It would have attempted the first lunar landing had Apollo 11 failed, but after the huge success of Neil Armstrong's mission, Apollo 12 was postponed by two months, and other Apollo missions also put on a more relaxed schedule. Apollo 12's spacecraft and launch vehicle were almost identical to Apollo 11's. One addition was hammocks to allow Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean to rest more comfortably on the Moon.
Shortly after being launched on a rainy day at Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 12 was twice struck by lightning, causing instrumentation problems but little damage. Switching to the auxiliary power supply resolved the data relay problem, saving the mission. The outward journey to the Moon otherwise saw few problems. On November 19, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at their expected location within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 robotic probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967. In making a pinpoint landing, they showed that NASA could plan future missions in the expectation that astronauts could land close to sites of scientific interest.
Conrad and Bean carried the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, a group of nuclear-powered scientific instruments, as well as the first color television camera taken by an Apollo mission to the lunar surface, but transmission was lost after Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun and its sensor was destroyed. On the second of two moonwalks, they visited Surveyor 3 and removed parts for return to Earth.
Lunar Module Intrepid lifted off from the Moon on November 20 and docked with the command module, which subsequently traveled back to Earth. The Apollo 12 mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown.
Source: Wikipedia
Image Source: Charles Conrad Jr., Apollo 12 Commander, examines the unmanned Surveyor III spacecraft during the second extravehicular activity (EVA-2). (NASA, Alan L. Bean via Wikimedia Commons, November 20, 1969)
Apollo 12 was launched on November 14, 1969, by NASA from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It would have attempted the first lunar landing had Apollo 11 failed, but after the huge success of Neil Armstrong's mission, Apollo 12 was postponed by two months, and other Apollo missions also put on a more relaxed schedule. Apollo 12's spacecraft and launch vehicle were almost identical to Apollo 11's. One addition was hammocks to allow Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean to rest more comfortably on the Moon.
Shortly after being launched on a rainy day at Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 12 was twice struck by lightning, causing instrumentation problems but little damage. Switching to the auxiliary power supply resolved the data relay problem, saving the mission. The outward journey to the Moon otherwise saw few problems. On November 19, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at their expected location within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 robotic probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967. In making a pinpoint landing, they showed that NASA could plan future missions in the expectation that astronauts could land close to sites of scientific interest.
Conrad and Bean carried the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, a group of nuclear-powered scientific instruments, as well as the first color television camera taken by an Apollo mission to the lunar surface, but transmission was lost after Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun and its sensor was destroyed. On the second of two moonwalks, they visited Surveyor 3 and removed parts for return to Earth.
Lunar Module Intrepid lifted off from the Moon on November 20 and docked with the command module, which subsequently traveled back to Earth. The Apollo 12 mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown.
Source: Wikipedia
Image Source: Charles Conrad Jr., Apollo 12 Commander, examines the unmanned Surveyor III spacecraft during the second extravehicular activity (EVA-2). (NASA, Alan L. Bean via Wikimedia Commons, November 20, 1969)