Today in space history, Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to orbit Mars in 1971, and Apollo 12 lifted off for the Moon in 1969. Here are some heroic artifacts from those missions in our space collection at work. First, Apollo 12: 1) ID plate removed from the Apollo 12 Lunar Module 2) PLSS Strap used by Commander Conrad on two moon walks to hold his life support backpack on. It was meant to be left behind on the moon, but he brought it back as a memento. 3) Flown Command Module instrument card, from astronaut Richard Gordon. It is the instrument panel checklist used for electrical power system aborts during launch and reentry. And this was this mission that made it all very topical! Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice after takeoff, with the engine's plume of plasma acting as a lightning rod to Earth. This flipped circuit breakers for all of the fuel cells and disabled the instrumentation in the Command Module housing the astronauts, flipping almost every warning light. But the Saturn V rocket continued to fly normally, guided by the Saturn V flight control computer, which functions independently from the Command Module and is located in a huge ring lower down the rocket. Autopilot FTW. The card is just missing the essential "SCE to AUX" 4) Saturn V flight control computer. It's an analog computer that received attitude error signals from the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer and flight dynamic measurements from the on-board accelerometers and rate gyros to generate output commands to steer the Saturn V by gimbaling the engines during ascent. Launched just four months after Apollo 11, this mission featured several firsts. Apollo 12 was: the first rocket launch attended by a U.S. president (Richard Nixon); the first precision lunar landing (Conrad landed within a few hundred feet of target); the first human examination of a previously-launched space probe (Surveyor 3); the first color television camera on the moon; and the first installation of a nuclear-powered Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) for long-term data transfer back to earth.