NASA’s Apollo 12 mission was launched toward the Moon by a Saturn V rocket on November 14, 1969.
Apollo 12 was the second crewed mission to land on the Moon. Its crew—Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Richard Gordon—launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Saturn V’s three stages supplied the enormous thrust needed to lift the spacecraft from Earth and place it on a trajectory toward the Moon.
The mission’s lunar module, Intrepid, landed in the Ocean of Storms, close to the earlier Surveyor 3 robotic spacecraft. Conrad and Bean examined Surveyor 3 and brought parts of it back to Earth. A common mix-up is confusing Saturn V with the spacecraft itself: Saturn V was the launch vehicle, while Apollo 12 consisted of the command module Yankee Clipper, the lunar module, and the service module.
Saturn V also launched Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17.