Alan Bean obituary

Member of Nasa ’s Apollo 12 mission who was the fourth person to walk on the moonThe astronaut Alan Bean, a member ofNasa ’s Apollo 12 mission, who has died aged 86, was the fourth person to step on to the surface of the moon, and the only one to go on to depict the view from outer space in paintings. His fellow astronautJohn Glenn described Bean ’s work as seeing “the same monochromatic world as [we did] ... yet with an artist’s eye he also saw intrinsic beauty”.Apollo 12, commanded byPete Conrad, was launched in November 1969, only four months afterNeil Armstrong andBuzz Aldrin had first stepped on to the moon ’s surface from the Apollo 11 lunar module. The Apollo 12 astronauts set up a nuclear generator in the Ocean of Storms to provide a power source; Bean, of Scottish descent on his father’s side, carried a piece ofMacBean tartan with him. He gathered many samples of rocks and lunar soil, including a green stone he described as “ginger ale bottle glass” – geologists later identified it as the mineral olivine.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Space US news The moon Nasa Science World news Painting Source Type: news