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
History of spaceflight the landing of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the Moon. Six such successful landings were achieved through 1972, with one failure on Apollo 13. The N1 rocket suffered four catastrophic unmanned launch failures between 1969 and 1972, and the Soviet government officially discontinued its manned lunar program on June 24, 1974, when Valentin Glushko succeeded Korolyov as General Spacecraft Designer. Both nations went on to fly relatively small, non-permanent manned space laboratories Salyut and Skylab, using their Soyuz and Apollo craft as shuttles. The US launched only one Skylab, but