In 1969, Apollo 12 began broadcasting from the Moon, but Alan Bean accidentally aimed its camera at the Sun and killed the live TV feed

The mishap still stands out in NASA's history. In November 1969, during his walk on the Moon, astronaut Alan Bean took an almost brand-new color television camera. Still, as he set it up, he pointed it at the Sun and overheated the camera's vidicon tube, ending all live TV transmissions from the Moon. For younger space fans who have only seen Apollo footage in compilations, this explains why Apollo 12 has so little surviving live television footage from the lunar surface; the mission still produced thousands of still photographs on 70mm film.

Why this camera mattered so much to NASA

Apollo 11 had already made its "one small step" in July 1969, some four months prior. For the Apollo 12 mission, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) decided to use a color camera to provide clearer, livelier footage of the moonwalk by commander Pete Conrad and Bean. The task required some engineering work. According to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, the television camera was moved from the lunar module Intrepid to allow viewers to see the moonwalk in color rather than black-and-white, as in the previous mission. Bean separated the camera from its bracket, moved it away from the module, and put it on a tripod. That is where the accident occurred.

What actually happened when Bean pointed it at the sun

The damage was not intentional, and Bean was not negligent; he was simply moving the camera to get a better shot of the module, and during the move, the lens passed over the sun. The museum's account places the accident during an early attempt to broadcast live video from the lunar surface, when Bean positioned the camera on the tripod to look at the lunar module. Because he suspected a malfunction in the color wheel, he tapped the camera to try to restore the picture, but the damage had already been done by the earlier solar exposure, so nothing changed.

When sunlight exposed the vidicon tube's target, the area was burned and damaged beyond repair. In technical terms, a portion of the target in the secondary electron conductivity vidicon received a high solar input, either directly from the sun or from a reflective surface, according to NASA's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. That same journal notes that a 1993 examination of the TV record showed Bean had pointed the camera at the Sun while mounting it on the tripod.

What was lost and what footage remained

Without the TV camera, live coverage of the moonwalks by Apollo 12 ended almost immediately after it began. This was a sharper loss than it would have been for Apollo 11, whose black-and-white broadcast of Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the Moon had no color capability to lose in the first place. The event was otherwise documented mainly by still photos and 16mm film from the module camera. That 16mm camera, now part of the same institution's collection, recorded some of the only available moving pictures of Conrad and Bean on the Moon.

How NASA changed procedures for later missions

Indeed, training methods and camera handling were changed to prevent this from happening again. NASA's most immediate fix was procedural: for Apollo 14, the same type of Westinghouse color camera flew again, but with a lens cap added and stricter protocols for how astronauts positioned and pointed it. The bigger structural change came a mission later. The museum also notes that, from Apollo 15 onward, control of the color TV camera was transferred from astronauts to Mission Control so astronauts could concentrate on their work, while Mission Control panned and tilted the cameras. Even the best-planned space missions still depended on split-second human decisions in bulky spacesuits in an unfamiliar environment. Bean's mistake ended the color television transmission from Apollo 12, a costly reminder that shaped how later crews handled their equipment.