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
Mare Tranquillitatis for the Black Sea) in his 1647 map. In February 1965, the Ranger 8 spacecraft was deliberately crashed into the Mare Tranquillitatis, after successfully transmitting 7,137 close-range photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission. Surveyor 5 landed in Mare Tranquillitatis on September 11, 1967, and was the fifth lunar lander of the uncrewed Surveyor program. This mare was also the landing site for the first crewed landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. After astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made a smooth touchdown in the Apollo 11 Lunar Module named