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| Mission 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 | |
Apollo 12 was the sixth manned mission in the Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon.
Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. —Pete Conrad
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 (CV-12). 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.
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