Sticking to its schedule despite a rainstorm, NASA launched Apollo 12 from Cape Kennedy on November 14, 1969. Almost immediately, the spacecraft was struck by lightning.

Specifically, the craft’s Saturn V launch vehicle was struck, causing launch controllers to lose telemetry contact at 36 seconds and again at 52 seconds. Some damage was done but control instruments were maintained.

Despite this initial problem, Apollo 12 was the sixth successful manned mission in the Apollo program and the second mission to ever see astronauts walk on the Moon.

It followed a similar path to that of its predecessor, Apollo 11 , except Apollo 12 flew at a higher inclination to the lunar equator and left the free-return trajectory after the second translunar midcourse correction. These adjustments in part allowed for greater control over lunar descent. Apollo 12’s lunar descent and landing location were more precisely targeted than Apollo 11. Using Doppler Effect radar techniques, Apollo 12 landed on November 19, 1969, in an area of the Moon’s Ocean of Storms that had been visited earlier by several unmanned missions.

On the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, take a look back at the NASA space program with this AspenCore Network Special Project “Apollo 11: One Giant Leap. “ Our recent coverage is supplemented with the articles from our 40th anniversary coverage from 2009.

In addition to exploring the Moon’s surface and gathering samples for research, Apollo 12’s mission included retrieving portions of the Surveyor III spacecraft, which had soft-landed on the Moon on April 20, 1967, a short distance from the selected landing site of Apollo 12.

Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad was the first to exit the lunar module. Neil Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface just a few months before with the famed “One small step for man …” statement, but the shorter Conrad said: “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.” A journalist had asked him if NASA had given him a phrase to say when he took his steps, and Conrad bet $500 that he would say these words. He later said he was never able to collect the money.



Commander Conrad unfurls an American flag after landing on the Moon. (Source: NASA)

Apollo 12’s crew returned to Earth on November 24, 1969, with a smooth splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. It had been feared that the launch lightning strike could have caused the command module's parachute mechanism to prematurely fire, disabling the explosive bolts that open the parachute compartment to deploy them. That would have caused the command module to crash uncontrollably into the Pacific Ocean, killing the crew instantly.

Unable to determine if such damage had occurred until the parachutes opened, NASA ground control did not tell the astronauts about the possibility. The parachutes deployed and functioned normally to end the mission.

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Editor's note : This article was originally posted on November 14, 2012 and edited on November 14, 2019.