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    "headline": "Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice after launch on November 14, 1969, and ‘SCE to Aux’ saved",
    "description": "Apollo 12 was hit by lightning 36.5 and 52 seconds after launch on November 14, 1969, until John Aaron's 'SCE to Aux' call fixed it.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-14T07:28:00+00:00",
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    "keywords": "Alan Bean, Apollo 12, John Aaron, NASA, Saturn V",
    "articleBody": "Thirty-six and a half seconds after it left the pad, the second crewed Moon mission was hit by lightning. Then it was hit again. Apollo 12 launched from Kennedy Space Center at 11:22 a.m. local time on November 14, 1969, into rain and a fully overcast sky, and within a minute its crew was staring at a panel lit up with warning lights. The rescue came from a flight controller in Houston, born in 1943, and a switch almost nobody had heard of. His call, “Flight, EECOM. Try SCE to Aux,” is still repeated by engineers 57 years later. What the lightning did NASA’s own photo record says the first bolt struck when the Saturn V was about 6,000 feet up. The rocket itself triggered the discharge. The electrical surge knocked all three of the spacecraft’s fuel cells offline, so the command module was running on batteries that could not keep up with demand. A second strike, 52 seconds into the flight, took out the “8-ball” attitude indicator. The Saturn V kept flying straight. Its guidance computer sat in a separate instrument unit that the strikes did not affect. But in Mission Control the telemetry turned to nonsense, and the astronauts could not tell exactly what had failed. “SCE to Aux” John Aaron, the EECOM controller responsible for the spacecraft’s electrical systems, recognized the garbled pattern. A year earlier he had watched a test at Kennedy where odd readings were traced to the Signal Conditioning Electronics, or SCE, the box that converts raw sensor signals into data controllers can read. He knew that switching it to its auxiliary setting let it work at low voltage. Flight Director Gerry Griffin and CAPCOM Gerald Carr both asked him to repeat it. Carr passed it up anyway: “Apollo 12, Houston. Try SCE to auxiliary.” Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean, who knew where the switch was, flipped it. The data came straight back, showing no serious damage, and Bean brought the fuel cells back online. NASA’s summary puts it simply: the mission was saved when Aaron realized the auxiliary setting would restore normal readings. Colleagues called him a “steely-eyed missile man.” Apollo 12’s first minute, second by second 0 s (16:22 UTC): liftoff from Launch Complex 39A, with President Richard Nixon watching. 36.5 s: first lightning strike at about 6,000 feet; fuel cells drop offline. 52 s: second strike knocks out the attitude indicator. Minutes later: “SCE to Aux” restores telemetry; the crew reaches Earth orbit and checks the ship. November 19: Conrad lands the lunar module Intrepid 535 feet from the Surveyor 3 probe. November 24: splashdown in the South Pacific. Two strikes 15.5 seconds apart, and a fix that took a single switch, decided whether NASA’s second Moon landing went ahead. Nixon’s presence made it the first crewed launch ever watched by a sitting US president. The worry nobody told the crew Engineers feared the lightning might have damaged the explosive bolts that open the parachute compartment. Since aborting would not have helped if the parachutes failed, controllers chose not to tell the astronauts and carried on. The parachutes worked normally on November 24. The rest of the mission was a showcase in precision. When Conrad, the shortest of the early astronauts, stepped onto the Ocean of Storms he said: “Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.” He and Bean later cut parts off Surveyor 3 to bring home. Aaron went on to manage power rationing on Apollo 13, whose zero-gravity film scenes were shot aboard NASA’s Vomit Comet. The program itself traces back to JFK’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech at Rice. November 14 is also the day in 1960 that Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz school. Apollo 12’s command module, Yankee Clipper, survived both strikes and is on display today at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia. Further reading NASA Science: Lightning Strikes Twice Wikipedia: Apollo 12 Wikipedia: John Aaron Image: NASA, scan: Ed Hengeveld, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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