Beschreibung:

[Apollo 12] The first robot spacecraft visited by humans on another world: Surveyor III standing on the ocean of Storms, with Pete Conrad’s hands at right. Alan Bean, 14–24 November 1969. Printed 1969. Vintage gelatin silver print on fiber-based paper [NASA image AS12–48-7121]. 25.4×20.3 cm (10×8 in), with NASA caption numbered “AS12–48-7121” on the verso, numbered “NASA AS12–48-7121” in black in top margin (NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas). Literature: Images from Space, The Camera in Orbit, Arnold, pl. 3. Alan Bean took this very beautiful photograph of Surveyor III “standing on the Moon as a solitary monument to man’s technology” (Arnold, plate 3) from inside Surveyor Crater at a distance of about 15 feet of the robot spacecraft. Block Crater is the small crater at the upper left near the rim of Surveyor Crater. Pete Conrad is seen as he approaches the robot spacecraft, with his hands very well visible to the right. The image shows superb lights and shadows. Apollo 12’s assignment was to land the LM near the location of Surveyor III, a picture-taking robot that had landed in the so-called Surveyor Crater thirty months earlier. It was a golden opportunity for NASA engineers to examine spacecraft parts which had been exposed to lunar conditions for a relatively long period of time, information which would someday be of use in designing space stations and lunar bases. Bean and Conrad thoroughly photographed the robot spacecraft for more than 40 minutes. This was the most distant photoshoot in history. “The Surveyor was covered with a coating of fine dust, and it looked tan or even brown in the lunar light, instead of the glistening white that it was when it left Earth more than two years earlier. It was decided later that the dust was kicked up by our descent onto the surface, even though we were 600 feet away.” Pete Conrad (NASA SP-350, p. 12.3).
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