Apollo 12: Pinpoint for Science

Video from the channel NASA STI Program about Apollo 12, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 28:30. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

NASA film about Apollo 12 combining mission footage and photographs, explanatory animations, and the communications between the crew and Houston. It follows the entire flight with Charles "Pete" Conrad, Richard Gordon and Alan Bean. It opens with the lift-off in the rain and the lightning strike that hit the spacecraft 36 seconds in. It continues with translunar injection, docking with the lunar module, entry into lunar orbit and the separation of Intrepid and Yankee Clipper. Then come the descent to the Surveyor 3 crater, the two surface excursions, the lunar lift-off and the rendezvous with Dick Gordon. It ends with the lunar module's impact on the Moon, the return and re-entry.

The footage is from the mission itself, which launched on 14 November 1969 and landed in the Ocean of Storms. From the ladder, Conrad estimates they ended up about 25 feet from the Surveyor crater. It includes images of Surveyor 3, which had landed there on 19 April 1967, 31 months earlier. The narration dates from shortly after the return: it discusses future missions and presents the Fra Mauro area as the landing site for Apollo 13.

The film explains that, unlike earlier missions, Apollo 12 abandoned the free-return trajectory in order to reach the chosen site with the right lighting. The target was a group of five craters arranged like a snowman. On the first excursion, lasting almost four hours, Conrad and Bean deployed the ALSEP. This was an automatic station with a nuclear generator and instruments for solar wind, lunar atmosphere, a magnetometer and a seismometer. The measured magnetic field turned out to be 10 to 20 times stronger than many scientists expected. The television camera burned out when pointed at the Sun. On the second excursion they covered nearly a mile, sampled six craters and removed parts from the Surveyor, including its camera. They then launched the lunar module into the Moon, and the seismometer recorded a vibration that had still not fully died out after 55 minutes. The film presents Apollo 12 as the demonstration of pinpoint landing and the model for scientific exploration on the following missions.