The first robot spacecraft visited by humans. Surveyor III standing in front of the LM Intrepid on the Ocean of Storms, EVA 2, 14-24 November 1969

Vintage gelatin silver print on fiber-based paper, printed 1969, (NASA AS12-48-7099), 25,4 x 20,3 cm, light crease in the upper left corner

Alan Bean framed this shot from inside Surveyor Crater at a distance of about 15 feet from the robot spacecraft.​​The LM Intrepid, the S-band antenna and the American flag are in the background.

Apollo 12’s assignment was to land the LM near the location of Surveyor III, a picture-taking robot that had landed in the so-called Surveyor Crater thirty months earlier.
It was a golden opportunity for NASA engineers to examine spacecraft parts which had been exposed to lunar conditions for a relatively long period of time, information which would someday be of use in designing space stations and lunar bases.

“The Surveyor was covered with a coating of fine dust, and it looked tan or even brown in the lunar light, instead of the glistening white that it was when it left Earth more than two years earlier. It was decided later that the dust was kicked up by our descent onto the surface, even though we were 600 feet away.”
Pete Conrad (NASA SP-350, p. 12.3)