Apollo 12
| Mission Insignia
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| Mission Statistics
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| Mission Name: | Apollo 12
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| Call Sign: | Command module:
Yankee Clipper
Lunar module:
Intrepid
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Number of
Crew: | 3
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| Launch: | November 14, 1969
16:22:00 UTC
Kennedy Space Center
LC 39A
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| Lunar Landing: | November 18, 1969
06:54:35 UTC
3° 0' 44.60" S - 23° 25' 17.65" W
Oceanus Procellarum
(Ocean of Storms)
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Lunar EVA
length: | 1st: 3 h 56 min 03 s
2nd: 3 h 49 min 15 s
Total: 7 h 45 min 18 s
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Lunar Surface
Time: | 31 h 31 min 11.6 s
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Lunar Sample
Mass: | 34.35 kg
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| Splashdown: | November 24, 1969
20:58:24 UTC
15° 47' S - 165° 9' W
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| Duration: | 10 d 4 h 36 min 24 s
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Number of
Lunar Orbits: | 45
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Time in
Lunar Orbit: | 88 h 58 min 11.52 s
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| Mass: | CSM 28,838 kg;
LM 15,235 kg
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| Crew Picture
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 Apollo 12 crew portrait (L-R: Conrad, Gordon and Bean) |
| Apollo 12 Crew
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Apollo 12 was the sixth manned mission in the Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon.
Crew
(1) number of spaceflights each crew member has completed up to this mission, inclusive
Backup Crew
Support Crew
Mission Parameters
LM - CSM Docking
Moon walk
- 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
- 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
Alan Bean pictured by Pete Conrad (echoed in Bean's helmet) (NASA)
Conrad, Surveyor 3 and the LM Intrepid (NASA)
Conrad jiggles the Surveyor III craft. (NASA)
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 S-IVB third stage was originally intended to be put into a solar orbit by venting the remaining propellant. However an extra long burn of the ullage motors meant that venting the remaining propellant in the tank of the S-IVB did not give the rocket stage enough energy to escape the Earth-Moon system and instead the stage ended up in a semi-stable orbit around the Earth after passing by the Moon in November 18, 1969. It finally entered into solar orbit 1971, but returned to Earth orbit (briefly) 31 years later. It was discovered by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung and he gave it the temporary designation J002E3 before it was determined to be an artificial, not natural, object.
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 Moon-walks 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 embarrassingly 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. By accident Bean left several rolls of exposed film on the lunar surface.
The Apollo 12 mission had landed on an area of the Ocean of Storms that had been visited earier by several unmanned missions (Luna 5, Surveyor 3, Ranger 7). The International Astronomical Union, recognizing this, christened this region Mare Cognitium (Known Sea). The landing site would thereafter be listed as Statio Cognitium on lunar maps (Conrad and Bean did not name their landing site, interestingly enough).
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
Reference
External links
