Pete Conrad the prime crew on the third following mission. If the swap of 8 and 9 had not occurred, Conrad might have commanded Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the Moon. On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 was launched with Conrad as Commander, Dick Gordon as Command Module Pilot, and Alan Bean as Lunar Module Pilot. The launch was the most harrowing of the Apollo program, as a series of lightning strikes just after liftoff temporarily knocked out power and guidance in the Command Module. Five days later, after stepping onto the lunar surface, Conrad joked about his own
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