Apollo 12 Research Paper

On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:22am in search for another human landing on the moon. The Module was 363 foot tall and is the second mission to land humans on the moon for the United States and is also known as the “Pinpoint” mission. The first mission in which humans walked on the moon was Apollo 11 that occurred just a few months prior. The main purpose of this mission was to bring back information and photos for future missions down the road. Apollo 12 landed on the moon on the 19th and was directly on the Ocean of Storms. One interesting thing that happened on the return from Apollo 12 was that the crew witnessed and photographed a solar eclipse. A solar eclipse is when the moon casts

“The Apollo 12 flight plan called for the LM ascent stage to provide a measured seismic stimulus for the ASLEP seismic experiment (Dunbar 1).” This mission was the second most successful landing for the United States. During the process of reaching the moon for Apollo 12, it was Conrad and Bean that stepped out of the Command Module and on the moon's surface. Richard Gordon stayed in the module by himself. In this mission the module was called Yankee Clipper. It was the machine that had the duty of carrying the astronauts to and from the moon. “Apollo 12 landed in an area called Mare Cognitum in the Ocean of Storms. Mare Cognitum means Known Sea and was so called because several unmanned spacecrafts had recently landed in the area and it was familiar (Adams).” This mission took approximately 10 days, four hours, 36 minutes, and 25 seconds to cover 952,354 miles of distance. Over all in mission Apollo 12 Yankee Clipper had 45 revolutions to better classify the orbits. “The Apollo 12 mission was the only mission to the Moon in which the astronauts were able to visit another spacecraft. The landing was so precise that Conrad and Bean were able to walk to Surveyor 3, a spacecraft which landed there in 1967, and took parts of it to return to earth (Adams).” Mentioned earlier their goal was to return with anything useful to help with missions down the road. Fun fact about what was said when the men landed on the Moon;

The rocket had just taken off and about 36.5 seconds in and about a mile and a half up there was a flash of white light. “As the astronauts sped through the storm about a mile and a half up, traveling faster than the speed of sound, the clouds’ electrical charge had given way. A lightning bolt, carrying up to a hundred thousand amps and a hundred million volts, had struck the capsule and passed down the metal exterior of the rocket, riding its fiery, highly ionized plume all the way to the earth (Pasternack).” The staff on earth said they had never dealt with something so odd when sending a rocket off. About sixteen seconds later the rocket ship as hit again with lightning. The rocket managed to stay on track so the mission was still a go. Although this was a low-light in the take off, the rest of the mission was handled very well. Through struggles and sudden decisions everyone worked together very well to achieve a successful mission. “If it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of John Aaron (and the recall of Bean), one of those lightning-induced failures might have thrown the entire lunar program off course, and possibly resulted in three deaths. Alongside the rescue of Apollo 13, the calm rescue of Apollo 12 was considered to be NASA’s “finest hour”