Intrepid-Surveyor

Fifty years ago, Apollo 12 landed within sight of another spacecraft, a dramatic demonstration of pinpoint landing capability. While Dick Gordon orbited Luna in the command module Yankee Clipper, Pete Conrad and Al Bean left the lunar module Intrepid and walked over to the robotic Surveyor, which had landed over two years earlier. They retrieved parts of Surveyor and returned them to Earth for engineering analysis. Bean’s photograph of Conrad at Surveyor with Intrepid on the horizon is a space exploration icon. Recently, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the landing site and revealed Surveyor and Intrepid’s descent stage connected by dark tracks in the lunar regolith left by the astronauts.