Apollo 12

   

Apollo 12
Mission Insignia
Apollo 12 insignia
Mission Statistics
Mission Name:Apollo 12
Call Sign:Command module:
Yankee Clipper
Lunar module:
Intrepid
Number of
Crew:		3
Launch:November 14, 1969
16:22:00 UTC
Kennedy Space Center
LC 39A
Lunar Landing:November 18, 1969
06:54:35 UTC
3° 0' 44.60" S - 23° 25' 17.65" W
Oceanus Procellarum
(Ocean of Storms)
Lunar EVA
length:		1st: 3 h 56 min 03 s
2nd: 3 h 49 min 15 s
Total: 7 h 45 min 18 s
Lunar Surface
Time:		31 h 31 min 11.6 s
Lunar Sample
Mass:		 34.35 kg
Landing:November 24, 1969
20:58:24 UTC
15° 47' S - 165° 9' W
Duration:10 d 4 h 36 min 24 s
Number of
Lunar Orbits:		45
Time in
Lunar Orbit:		88 h 58 min 11.52 s
Mass:CSM 28,838 kg;
LM 15,235 kg
Crew Picture
Apollo 12 crew portrait (L-R: Conrad, Gordon and Bean)
Enlarge
Apollo 12 crew portrait (L-R: Conrad, Gordon and Bean)
Apollo 12 Crew

Apollo 12 was the sixth manned mission in the Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon.

Crew

Mission Parameters

LM - CSM Docking


Moon walk

EVA 1 Start: November 19, 1969, 11:32:35 UTC

  • Conrad - EVA 1
  • Stepped onto moon: 11:44:22 UTC
  • LM ingress: 15:27:17 UTC
  • Bean - EVA 1
  • Stepped onto moon: 12:13:50 UTC
  • LM ingress: 15:14:18 UTC

EVA 1 End: November 19, 15:28:38 UTC

    • Duration: 3 hours, 56 minutes, 03 seconds


EVA 2 Start: November 20, 1969, 03:54:45 UTC

  • Conrad - EVA 2
  • Stepped onto moon: 03:59:00 UTC
  • LM ingress: 07:42:00 UTC
  • Bean - EVA 2
  • Stepped onto moon: 04:06:00 UTC
  • LM ingress: 07:30:00 UTC

EVA 2 End: November 20, 07:44:00 UTC

    • Duration: 3 hours, 49 minutes, 15 seconds

See also

Quote

Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. —Pete Conrad

Mission Highlights

Shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, the Saturn V rocket body was hit by a bolt of upper-atmosphere lightning. The CM's instruments went off-line for a few seconds, but power was quickly restored.

The second lunar landing was an exercise in precision targeting. The descent was automatic, with only a few manual corrections by Conrad. The landing, in the Ocean of Storms, brought the lunar module "Intrepid" within walking distance-182.88 meters-of a robot spacecraft that had touched down there two-and-a-half years earlier. Conrad and Bean brought pieces of the Surveyor 3 back to Earth for analysis, and took two Moon­walks lasting just under four hours each. They collected rocks and set up experiments that measured the Moon's seismicity, solar wind flux and magnetic field. Meanwhile Gordon, on board the "Yankee Clipper" in lunar orbit, took multispectral photographs of the surface. The crew stayed an extra day in lunar orbit taking photographs. When "Intrepid's" ascent stage was dropped onto the Moon after Conrad and Bean rejoined Gordon in orbit, the seismometers the astronauts had left on the lunar surface registered the vibrations for more than an hour.

Although Apollo 11 had made an almost embarassingly imprecise landing well outside the designated target area, Apollo 12 succeeded, on November 19, in making a pin-point landing in the Ocean of Storms, within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed there in April 1967. The astronauts remained on the moon for thirty-one and a half hours, collecting samples and retrieving parts of the unmanned probe for study.

To improve the quality of television pictures from the moon, a color camera was carried on Apollo 12 (unlike the monochrome camera that was used on Apollo 11). Unfortunately, when Bean carried the camera to the place near the lunar module where it was to be set up, he inadvertently pointed it directly into the Sun, destroying the vidicon tube. Television coverage of this mission was thus terminated almost immediately.

The command module and its crew were flawlessly recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. The ship is now open to the public as a museum in Alameda, CA.

The command module is displayed at the Virginia Air and Space Center, Hampton, Virginia and the lunar module impacted the Moon on 20 November, 1969 at 3.94 S, 21.20 W.

Statistics

Launched: November 14, 1969 from Pad 39A
Returned: November 24, 1969
Crew members: Pete Conrad, commander; Dick Gordon, command module pilot; Alan Bean, lunar module pilot
Command module: Yankee Clipper
Lunar module: Intrepid
Landed: November 19, 1969
Lunar landing site: 3.2 S, 23.4 W -- Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms)
On surface: 1 day 7.5 hours
Lunar EVA: 7.7 hours (3.9 + 3.8)
Samples: 34.4 kg
Alan Bean descends from the LM. (NASA)
Enlarge
Alan Bean descends from the LM. (NASA)
Alan Bean pictured by Pete Conrad (echoed in Bean's helmet) (NASA)
Enlarge
Alan Bean pictured by Pete Conrad (echoed in Bean's helmet) (NASA)
Conrad, Surveyor 3 and the LM Intrepid (NASA)
Enlarge
Conrad, Surveyor 3 and the LM Intrepid (NASA)


Reference

External links

Preceded by :
Apollo 11 		Project Apollo Followed by :
Apollo 13




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