Alan Bean Apollo 12 Pete Conrad Lunar Surface

Pete Conrad deploying scientific experiments on the lunar surface, 14- 24 November 1969

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, printed 1969, numbered "NASA AS12-46-6919" (NASA MSC), with numbered NASA caption and "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, 25,4 x 20,3 cm

Pete Conrad and Alan Bean set up equipment that measured the Moon’s seismicity, solar wind flux and magnetic field, and relayed the measurements to Earth.
These instruments reflect the first complete nuclear-powered ALSEP station set up by astronauts on the Moon to relay long-term data from the lunar surface.

“That is the Moon exploration. You’re trying to plant these little experiments, which, at the time, you don’t care whether they’re seismometers, magnetometers, solar winds; you just have to put that particular device level and pointed north or something like that. And so you’re really not doing anything so, more than, like, housekeeping, almost.”

Alan Bean (Chaikin, Voices, p. 77)