Alan Bean was the lunar module pilot on the Apollo 12 mission, his first ever spaceflight. He joined Charles Conrad in exploring the surface of the moon for over a day before returning to Earth.
Bean served as the commander of the Skylab 3 mission in 1973 before retiring from NASA in 1981 to concentrate on painting. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, many of Bean’s works were displayed at the Smithsonian.
