As the first crewed moon landing, Apollo 11 gets a lot of attention, but there’s plenty to discuss about the later landings as well. Today, we’re going to talk about Apollo 12, humanity’s second visit to the moon’s surface.
Apollo 12 launched on 14 November 1969, four months after Apollo 11, with a crew consisting of commander Pete Conrad, lunar module pilot Alan Bean and command module pilot Dick Gordon. For a quick rundown of what these roles mean, you can take a look at our article about the Apollo spacecraft.
Apollo 12 lightning strike
Apollo 12 had a slightly alarming start. Less than a minute after liftoff, the rocket was hit by lightning twice, causing most of the onboard systems to fail. John Aaron, a flight controller at NASA’s mission control centre, advised the crew to switch the signal conditioning equipment (SCE) to auxiliary power, which enabled them to resolve the issues and continue the mission.
Aaron’s role in Apollo 12 is a reminder that the moon landings relied on many people for their success. The astronauts themselves played the most visible role, but they were supported by a huge number of people: people overseeing the mission, people designing systems, people building equipment. These people may not have walked on the moon themselves, but they helped to bring the crew there. If something went wrong, the team on ground level would work quickly; the instruction to switch the SCE to auxiliary power reached the crew just sixty seconds after the first lightning strike.
If you’re wondering why present-day launches often seem to be delayed because of weather conditions, a large part of this is to reduce the risk of lightning strikes like the ones Apollo 12 suffered. Because rockets can trigger lightning while flying through electrically charged clouds (this BBC article on Apollo 12 describes the rocket as essentially becoming a conductive rod), it’s important to be cautious. After the Atlas-Centaur rocket AC-67 was destroyed by lightning while attempting to launch a satellite on 26 March 1987, a Lightning Advisory Panel was created and laid out specific rules for the conditions in which rockets could be launched.
Precision landing on the moon
Fortunately, despite the rocky start to the mission, Apollo 12 made it safely to the moon. In fact, it landed on the moon with impressive precision.
The main goal of the earlier Apollo 11 was to land humans on the moon and return them to Earth. It had landed about four miles from the site it was aiming for, but simply landing on the moon was more important than landing at precisely the right location.
One of the goals of Apollo 12, however, was to retrieve parts from the uncrewed spacecraft Surveyor 3, which had been on the moon for two and a half years. To achieve this goal, it needed to be landed precisely, and it did indeed manage to touch down only about 500 feet from Surveyor 3.
This was an important achievement, not just for Apollo 12 but for future missions. It’s a lot easier to plan activities on the moon if you know that it’s possible to land at a specific chosen location.
As a mission, Apollo 12 was lighter in tone than Apollo 11. When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon during Apollo 11, his first words were, ‘That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Less famously, Apollo 12’s Conrad, who was five inches shorter than Armstrong, stepped onto the moon and declared, ‘Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.’
Conrad’s first words were, in fact, the result of a bet he’d made with a journalist. The journalist was convinced that the government dictated what astronauts should say when they stepped onto the lunar surface. By saying something silly, Conrad demonstrated to the world that astronauts were able to choose their own first words on the moon.
Dangerous dust
During Apollo 11, Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon for just two and a half hours. Apollo 12’s crew spent much longer outside the lunar lander: over seven hours across two different excursions.
This meant that the Apollo 12 crew had more time to explore, make observations and collect samples. However, it also meant they had a larger problem with lunar dust.
Inevitably, while Conrad and Bean were exploring on the moon, the dust of the lunar surface ended up on their boots, equipment and spacesuits. When they went back inside the lunar lander, the dust came with them. As they lifted off and returned to lunar orbit, the dust began to float, suddenly presenting dangers; it could be breathed in, get into the astronauts’ eyes or clog up the equipment.
‘The LM [lunar module] was filthy dirty, and it has so much dust and debris floating around in it that I took my helmet off and almost blinded myself,’ Conrad reported. ‘I immediately got my eyes full of junk, and I had to put my helmet back on.’
Due to the lack of wind or flowing water, there are almost no natural processes of erosion on the moon. This meant that the dust particles were sharp and hard-edged, like ground glass, making the dust particularly unpleasant to deal with.
Conrad and Bean tried to vacuum the dust off each other, without much success. In the end, to minimise the amount of dust they brought back into the main spacecraft from the lunar lander, they had to strip naked for the transfer between spacecraft.
Having learnt from the Apollo 12 crew’s experience, later Apollo missions would carry a large brush that the crew could use to dust themselves down before entering the lunar module.
Success in spite of struggles
Apollo 12 was planned to be the first mission to broadcast footage in colour from the moon’s surface, whereas Apollo 11’s moon landing was broadcast in black and white. However, there’s not much video footage from the Apollo 12 landing, on account of a mishap: when Alan Bean was setting up the camera on the moon, he accidentally pointed it at the sun, destroying the image.
Between the dust issues, the lightning on liftoff and the camera trouble, Apollo 12 was a mission with its share of problems. However, it was undoubtedly a success; the mission reached the moon, the lander touched down at the chosen location, and the astronauts returned safely to Earth.
The next Apollo mission would deal with a more serious issue. In the next article in our Apollo series, we’ll be talking about Apollo 13.
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