55 years ago on November 19th 1969, Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean of Apollo 12 takes his first walk on the Moon, marking the second crew to ever walk on the Moon.

Read more about some interesting details on Apollo 12 in my thread here:

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This is how recovery teams found the spacecraft.

Here is Orion's splashdown 20 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of California.

At 5:20pm on December 11th, Orion reentered the Earth's atmosphere.

Once launched and separated, the spacecraft (called Orion) deployed its 24-foot solar wings and made its first flyby of the Moon. It then performed a distant orbit of the Moon for five days, before making its final flyby of the Moon and eventually returning to Earth.

Artemis I was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Initially, the launch was scheduled for August 29th but was delayed multiple times.

Although unmanned, the spacecraft carried three mannequins equipped with sensors to provide data on their experiences. Snoopy even rode along!

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NASA's Image of the Day: Artemis I Launch (November 16th, 2022).

Artemis I was an unmanned Moon-orbiting mission primarily aimed at testing the spacecraft for subsequent Artemis missions, and it marked NASA's return to lunar exploration after the Apollo program was terminated 50 years prior.

***CORRECTION***

The probe had landed two-and-a-half years earlier; not seven months earlier.

Here is a picture of Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3 probe.

As result of the mission, geologists were able to date the impact that formed the crater known as Copernicus to 810,000,000 years ago!

Here is footage of Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean accidentally pointing the first colour camera on the Moon at the Sun, and thus destroying its sensor. As a result, TV coverage of the mission immediately ended.

Apollo 12's mission patch reflects the crew's naval background as US Navy commanders and is quite hilarious.

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NASA's Image of the Day: The Launch of Apollo 12.

55 years ago today (November 14th 1969) Apollo 12 launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:22am. It was the second ever lunar landing mission, taking place four months after Neil Armstrong's lunar landing with Apollo 11.