Apollo 12: The NASA Mission Reports

CD-ROM and Book. When the crew of Apollo 11 returned to earth in July 1969 they brought with them a wealth of new information about the moon. Now astronauts Charles (Pete) Conrad, Alan Bean and Richard Gordon would return to the moon and build on that knowledge. The real test for the crew of Apollo 12 was not to see if they could get to the moon, but to see if they could get to an exact place on the moon. Their target was in an area known as the Ocean of Storms. On 14 November 1969 the crew of Apollo 12 blasted off to their place in history. Not only would Conrad and Bean become the third and fourth men to walk on the moon but they would land the lunar module Intrepid within 600 feet of their designated target. Waiting for them was the unmanned space probe Surveyor 3 which had soft-landed in April 1967. The flight of Apollo 12, which began almost catastrophically when the huge Saturn V was struck by lightning just moments after lift off, went on to yield an enormous amount of valuable data collected during over seven and a half hours on the lunar surface. On their return home the crew of Apollo 12 became the first humans to witness an eclipse of the Sun by the Earth.