Alan Bean Alan Bean Alan LaVern Bean (March 15, 1932 – May 26, 2018) was an American naval officer and naval aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut; he was the fourth person to walk on the Moon. He was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3. He made his first flight into space aboard Apollo 12, the second manned mission to land on the Moon, at age 37 in November 1969. He made his second and final flight into space on the Skylab 3 mission in 1973, the second manned mission to
Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Earth was Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut who was launched in "Vostok 1" on April 12, 1961. The first human to walk on the surface of another Solar System body was Neil Armstrong, who stepped onto the Moon on July 21, 1969 during the "Apollo 11" mission; five more Moon landings occurred through 1972. The United States' reusable Space Shuttle flew 135 missions between 1981 and 2011. Two of the five shuttles were destroyed in accidents. The first orbital space station to host more than one crew was NASA's Skylab, which successfully held three crews from 1973 to 1974. True