Apollo 12
40 years ago, NASA was behind the first return to the Moon! A mission that was far from being a repeat of Apollo 11.
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The Apollo 12 mission crew. From left to right: Charles “Pete” Conrad (Commander), Richard Gordon (Pilot of the Yankee Clipper command module) and Alan Bean (pilot of the Intrepid lunar module). Behind them, a full-size model of the lunar module. See more pictures in this Enjoy Space portfolio.
Credit: NASA |
Less than four months after the historic steps of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, America once again sent two astronauts to our natural satellite. The speed at which these events took place led to dreams of a space shuttle as of the middle of the 1970’s, a permanent lunar base and, above all, a landing on Mars before the year 2000!
An illusion
But this enthusiasm was but an illusion. For the politicians that voted the space budgets at the time, the most important thing had been accomplished by Apollo 11, namely, that of beating the Soviets in the race to the Moon. Consequently, the money supplies now began to be reduced. NASA, however, wanted to show that lunar exploration had only just started and fought against another illusion which presented Apollo 12 as just a repeat of Apollo 11.
In actual fact, the scientific programme for this mission was much more ambitious as it was based on the knowledge acquired from the previous flight. Now that they knew how to land on the Moon, it was to be done accurately as the astronauts were to pay a visit to Surveyor 3, a probe that went up there in 1967. And, instead of just one spacewalk lasting two and a half hours, this time two of almost four hours had been scheduled.
Hit by lightning at lift-off
On 14 November 1969, the Saturn V rocket blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre at 11:22 local time... in a rain storm! 36 seconds later, lightning struck the launch vehicle as it soared up into the sky. A second bolt of lightning hit 16 seconds later. The trajectory was not affected by this, but the ground controllers and the astronauts noted an anomaly. The lightning had led to the shutting down of the fuel cells for the CSM (Command and Service Module, the unit formed by the Apollo capsule and its service module) the electrical power supply of which automatically switched to batteries. In Houston, engineer John Aaron correctly identified the breakdown as he had been confronted with this during training a year beforehand. But when he asked the crew to activate a specific switch, neither the Commander Pete Conrad, nor the Command Module Pilot Charles Gordon understood the instruction. Luckily, like Aaron, Alan Bean remembered the training session and carried out the required procedure, certainly saving the mission from being cancelled!
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The 110 m high Saturn V rocket, weighing 3,000 tonnes, blasted off from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre in a shower of rain at 11:22 local Florida time.
Crédit : NASA |
Conrad’s long step
Four days later, Apollo 12 entered into lunar orbit. Charles Gordon remained aboard the “capsule” dubbed Yankee Clipper whilst his two companions went down to our natural satellite aboard the Intrepid Lunar Module. The landing on the Moon took place on 19 November 1969 at 06:54 UT (Universal Time) in a region known by the name of the Ocean of Storms. A little less than 5 hours later, Pete Conrad was to become the third man on the Moon and said: “That may have been a small one for Neil, but it’s a long one for me!” Strange for a phrase meant to be historic... However, the Commander of Apollo 12 was renowned for his natural verve and a good dose of self mockery. He was referring to the fact that he was not as tall as Neil Armstrong and also proved to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that NASA did not dictate the content of the astronauts’ conversations as she thought! That Conrad would tell this joke at the foot of the Lunar Module ladder had even been part of a 500 dollar bet (a sizeable sum in 1969) between the two of them. The astronaut later stated that he had never claimed his due.
Thirty minutes afterwards, Alan Bean joined his Commander. The two men then got on with their full programme including the flying of the American flag, the starting of the scientific experiments and the collecting of samples. Regrettably, when moving the television camera, Bean accidentally pointed it at the Sun which instantly burned out the vidicon sensor, depriving Apollo 12 of one of its major assets as regards communication: colour pictures live from the Moon.
Surveyor 3: a first!
This first spacewalk ended at 15:28 UT with the closing of Intrepid’s hatch. Both men then got some rest before beginning their second moonwalk on 20 November at 03:54 UT. The purpose of their excursion: the Surveyor 3 probe which arrived on the Moon on 17 April 1967. Due to the accuracy of the landing, they were only about 200 m away. For the first and only time to date, the astronauts were going to pay a visit to the robot that had preceded them! The journey was not, however, just symbolic and was of the utmost interest to the engineers. They did not have any feedback (and even now have very little) concerning the way in which this type of equipment “aged” on the Moon. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean therefore took 10 kg of various components as samples from Surveyor 3, including its camera, in order to take them back down to Earth. The camera is currently exhibited in Washington’s Air and Space Museum. This second and final moonwalk of the mission ended at 07:44 UT on 20 November. Six hours and forty minutes later, the upper section of Intrepid lifted off with Pete Conrad and Alan Bean aboard, on its way to rejoin the Yankee Clipper and Richard Gordon. Once the three Apollo crew members were reunited, the return to Earth could begin.
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During the second spacewalk, the astronauts (here Pete Conrad) paid a visit to the Surveyor 3 probe which landed on the Moon in April 1967. We can see the lunar module in the background.
Credit: NASA |
Lunar impressionism
Yankee Clipper entered the Earth’s atmosphere on 24 November 1969. At this point, the three men were still unaware that several technicians had feared since 14 November that the lightning during the lift-off had damaged the explosive system that triggered the opening of the parachutes... This was not the case and the capsule safely splashed down into the Pacific Ocean at 20:58 UT. The mission had lasted a total of 10 days, 4 hours and 26 minutes. It brought back 34 kilos of lunar samples as a result of the 31.5 hours spent on the soil of our natural satellite, of which moonwalks accounted for 7 hours and 27 minutes. It should be mentioned that, Richard Gordon orbited the Moon 45 times during 89 hours. He had hoped to go back and walk on the Moon with Apollo 18; a project that was never to come to fruition. However, the Command Module Pilot went on to work on the development of the space shuttle. Pete Conrad, on the other hand, had the chance to go back but stayed within the Earth “suburbs” as he was Commander of the first crew on the American Skylab station in 1973. He died following a motorbike accident on 8 July 1999. Conrad’s crewmate on the Moon, Alan Bean, also commanded a Skylab mission. After having left NASA in 1981, he devoted himself entirely to painting. Today, his works which represent the Apollo missions in a style inspired by the French impressionists have earned him a worldwide reputation and Alan Bean is even considered to be the first painter to have been on the Moon.
Published on 14 November 2009
