Happy birthday, Alan Bean, Apollo and Skylab astronaut!

Alan Bean, born March 15, 1932 in Wheeler, Texas (that's in the panhandle just north of Shamrock), made his first trip into space aboard Apollo 12, becoming the fourth man to walk on the moon.    NASA slected him as part of Astronaut Group 3 in 1963 and was assigned backup command pilot for Gemini X.  He was assigned as backup crew for Apollo 9 when fellow astronaut Clifton Williams was killed when his T-38 jet trainer crashed.

Bean was launched on Apollo 12 in November 1969.  The spacecraft was struck by lightning 36 seconds after launch and Bean restored telemetry by executing the "Flight, try SCE to 'Aux'" task.  The lunar lander touched down in the Ocean of Storms within walking distance of the probe Surveyor 3, which had landed in April 1967.  Bean and Pete Conrad removed parts of the probe to return to Earth for testing. 

Bean was then assigned as commander of Skylab 3, with Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma.  During the mission, Bean tested a prototype of the Manned Maneuvering Unit and performed an EVA outside Skylab.

He resigned from NASA in June 1981 to devote time to his painting.

Surveyor 3, third lunar lander, launched 1967

Surveyor 3, launched April 27, 1967, was the third lander of the Surveyor program.  It landed on April 20 in Ocean Procellarum.  Actually, it bounced a couple of times before making a soft landing.  Surveyor 3 performed soil samples using a scoop, digging trenches that were photographed and transmitted to Earth.  The first lunar nightfall came on May 3 and when dawn came 14 Earth-days later, Surveyor 3 could not be reactivated.

Apollo 12 used Surveyor 3 as a target, landing within walking distance. Commander Charles Conrad Jr and Alan Bean, Lunar Module Pilot collected several components from Surveyor 3 and returned them to Earth, to study the long-term effects of exposure to the lunar environment on human-made stuff.