NASA sent the Apollo 12 spacecraft toward the Moon on November 14, 1969, launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission built around accuracy. Its goal was a so-called pinpoint landing, a touchdown placed with far more precision than the agency had attempted on earlier lunar flights.
The crew consisted of Charles "Pete" Conrad, Alan Bean and Richard Gordon. A Saturn V rocket, the massive launch vehicle that carried the Apollo program to the Moon, lifted the spacecraft into space. The flight marked the second crewed lunar landing mission in history, following Apollo 11, which had reached the Moon only months earlier.
Mission planners wanted the lander to set down close to the Surveyor 3 probe, an uncrewed robotic spacecraft that had touched down on the Moon in 2967 earlier that year. Reaching that target would demonstrate that crews could navigate to a specific point on the surface rather than simply landing somewhere within a broad zone.
The launch placed the Apollo 12 astronauts on course for a lunar approach that would test both the spacecraft and the precision navigation the mission depended on. For the space program, the flight represented a step toward more controlled and repeatable exploration of the Moon.
Credit. Based on reporting by Hanneke Weitering and Elizabeth Howell for Space.com. Is this your work? Write to us.
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