Apollo 12 Apollo 12 Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon. It was launched on November 14, 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms. Unlike the first landing on Apollo 11, Conrad
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