Q&A
What happened on Apollo 12?
• SHORT ANSWER
Although sandwiched between two more famous missions, the second Moon landing had its shocks
• LONG ANSWER
The events of Apollo 11 (the Moon landing, “one small step…” and all that) and Apollo 13 (the near-disaster turned into a remarkable rescue) are undoubtedly major chapters in the history of space travel, but what about the one in between?
For the Apollo 12 astronauts, the pressure was off following the previous mission’s success. And it showed, given Pete Conrad’s first words on the Moon: “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!”
Things weren’t all that fun at the beginning. Within a minute of take-off on 14 November 1969, lightning struck the craft… twice. Yet despite some electrical systems failing, this shocking start did nothing to hinder the voyage.
Conrad and Alan Bean spent over 31 gleeful, joke-filled hours on the Moon and made two moonwalks. The first saw them set up geological and environmental experiments, which sent data to Nasa for years, while the second explored the site of Surveyor 3, a robotic probe that landed in 1967. Dick Gordon, on the command module, took photos that proved invaluable for picking future landing sites. Unfortunately, there isn’t as much footage from Apollo 12 as there should be, since Bean broke the colour camera they took with them by accidentally pointing it at the Sun.