Struck by lightning twice at launch and completely blinded, Pete Conrad still landed within 600 feet of a probe sent three years earlier — the most precise bullseye in space history.
Apollo 12 launched on November 14, 1969, into a stormy sky against the advice of some meteorologists. Thirty-six seconds after liftoff, the Saturn V rocket was struck by lightning, wiping out power to nearly every instrument in the capsule. Eighteen seconds later, a second bolt hit. Flight controller John Aaron's obscure knowledge of an 'SCE to AUX' switch setting restored power and saved the mission.
Commander Pete Conrad's goal was a pinpoint landing in the Ocean of Storms, just 600 feet from the Surveyor 3 probe that had landed in 1967. He nailed it — parking the lunar module Intrepid within 535 feet of the probe, demonstrating NASA could land anywhere on the Moon with precision.
Conrad's first words on the lunar surface were a cheerful prank. He had bet a journalist $500 that he would say something unscripted: 'Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!' She never paid up.
Astronaut Alan Bean accidentally destroyed the color TV camera by pointing it at the Sun, burning out the vidicon tube within minutes of setup. The rest of the moonwalk was only documented in still photographs and audio.
Conrad and Bean visited Surveyor 3, cut off parts including the camera and a soil scoop, and brought them back to Earth. Scientists studying the camera later claimed to find a bacterium inside it that had survived 31 months on the Moon — a claim that sparked intense debate but was eventually attributed to terrestrial contamination during analysis.
The crew returned with 73.75 pounds of lunar samples, including rocks from the edge of a large crater that gave geologists a window into deeper layers of the Moon's crust. Command Module Pilot Dick Gordon had orbited alone for 31.5 hours while his crewmates worked below.