The Other Moon Landing of 1969
Perhaps if the color images captured on the Moon by astronaut Alan Bean had been broadcast on television as planned, the general public would have a better memory of the Apollo 12 mission. Source: Wikipedia Commons As the New Year progresses deeper into the calendar, voracious readers across the globe will be treated to seemingly endless nostalgia for the Apollo 11 space mission, which first put human footprints on the Moon in July 1969. United States astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin made history fifty years ago when they accomplished this feat, thanks to the tireless work of hundreds of thousands of Americans throughout the aerospace industry. What many people often forget is there was a second Moon landing in 1969, almost four months to the day after Armstrong and Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface: Apollo 12. On November 19, 1969, Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean reached the Moon and doubled down on President John F. Kennedy’s promise to achieve h...