Portal:Space exploration/Featured/November 2007

Apollo 12 was the sixth manned mission in the Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon. It lasted from November 14, 1969 until November 24, 1969.

Shortly after lift-off from Kennedy Space Center, the Saturn V rocket body was hit by a bolt of upper-atmosphere lightning. The CM's instruments momentarily went off-line and Mission Control lost the telemetry feeds from the spacecraft for several seconds. With telemetry restored, the crew proceeded to parking orbit and was able to fully restore and verify the functionality of their spacecraft before re-igniting the S-IVB third stage for trans-lunar injection.

The Apollo 12 mission landed on an area of the Ocean of Storms that had been visited earlier by several unmanned missions (Luna 5, Surveyor 3, and Ranger 7). The International Astronomical Union, recognizing this, christened this region Mare Cognitium (Known Sea). The landing site would thereafter be listed as Statio Cognitium on lunar maps (Conrad and Bean did not formally name their landing site, interestingly enough, though the intended touchdown point was nicknamed Pete's Parking Lot by Conrad).

''Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.'' &mdash; Pete Conrad (somewhat shorter in stature than Armstrong) as he stepped onto the lunar surface for the first time. Conrad had actually come up with the quote some time before the mission, to prove to reporter Oriana Fallaci that Neil Armstrong had not been told by NASA what to say as he stepped onto the Moon.

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