Apollo 12Apollo 12
This was an exercise of precision targeting. The Lunar Module Intrepid was brought to the surface of the moon automatically by radar and computer, needing only a few manual corrections by the pilot Pete Conrad. It landed only 183 meters from its target in the Ocean of Storms, where the old Surveyor 3 robot spacecraft had soft-landed on the surface of the moon back in 1967.
Conrad and Bean brought back pieces of the old Surveyor and took two moon walks, each lasting almost four hours, during which they set up seismic and magnetismexperiments and some experiments to test the effects of the solar wind. When the crew, back aboard the Command Module "Yankee Clipper", launched the LM's ascent stage into the moon, the seismometers they had left behind recorded the vibrations of its impact for over an hour.
They had such a good time that they stayed an extra day in lunar orbit taking pictures.
