TheSpaceRace.com - Alan Bean

Earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Texas in 1955.

After graduating from the ROTC Bean was commissioned in the US Navy and assigned to a jet attack squadron at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. After a four-year tour, he attended the Navy Test Pilot School and thereafter flew several types of new Navy aircraft as a test pilot.

Selected by NASA in the third group of astronauts in 1963. Bean was on the backup crews of Gemini 10 and Apollo 9 before being assigned the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 12.

Became the fourth man on the Moon on November 19, 1969. During two excursions onto the lunar surface, Bean and Charles Conrad deployed surface experiments powered by the first nuclear thermal generator deployed on the moon. Their pinpoint landing allowed them to inspect an unmanned Surveyor spacecraft that landed there two years earlier. They collected and returned 30 kg of rocks and lunar soil for study on Earth.

Bean commanded the second manned Skylab mission, Skylab 3, launched on July 28, 1973. The other crew members were Science Pilot Owen Garriott and Command Module pilot Jack Lousma. They would spend 59 days aboard the space workshop. On the third EVA of the mission, Bean and Garriott installed a new set of gyroscopes to replace failed units. During the course of the mission Earth resources photography, solar astronomy, metals processing and biological experiments were conducted.

Bean retired from the Navy in 1975 but continued with NASA as head of the Astronaut Candidate Operations and Training Group. He retired from NASA in 1981 and thereafter became a space painter of some repute.