The second giant leap: When mankind walked on the moon again in 'other' Apollo mission

This article is part of Yahoo's 'On This Day' series

In the summer, billionaires Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos engaged in their own space race.

But they aren't the only intrepid duo to make headlines for blasting into orbit in the same year.

Back in 1969, a pair of Nasa Apollo missions made the remarkable feat of landing on the moon.

The first set of astronauts to do so, in July of that year, were part of Apollo 11, led by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who made headlines around the world.

But what about the second group, who followed in the one small footstep made by Armstrong and made their own giant leap?

The names of those astronauts may not trip off the tongue like their predecessors, but they too made history.

On 19 November 1969, 52 years ago, the astronauts of Apollo 12 took their own moonwalk.

The crew of Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, lunar module pilot Alan L Bean and command module pilot Richard F Gordon launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 14 November 1969, just four months after Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins.

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And there was drama before the shuttle could even take off.

Shortly before launch on a rare rainy Florida day, Apollo 12 was struck twice by lightning, but the mission was saved by switching to the auxiliary power supply, thereby solving a data relay problem caused by the bad weather.

Watch: Inside Nasa's restored Apollo 11 mission control room

US president Richard Nixon was at the launch, the first time a sitting commander-in-chief had witnessed a crewed space launch in person, alongside his vice president Spiro Agnew.

Conrad and Bean were the two astronauts who set foot on the surface on the moon, on 19 November, while Gordon remained in lunar orbit.

Read more: Nasa finds water on the moon in breakthrough for space exploration

The mission was about exploration - Conrad and Bean had made several geology field trips back on Earth in preparation - and the crew brought nuclear-powered scientific instruments.

When Conrad, at 5ft 6.5 inches, small for an astronaut, set foot on the lunar surface, his first words were: “Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.” Armstrong was four and a half inches taller.

Conrad had made a $500 bet with a journalist that he would say these words upon walking on the moon, to dispel the notion the US government gave astronauts a script, but he never did collect his winnings.

The crew had taken a colour camera with them to make the viewing experience for those watching TV back on Earth more awe-inspiring - Apollo 11’s images were shot in black-and-white - but Bean mistakenly pointed it directly at the sun, destroying a sensor, ending any broadcast footage of the mission - and any chance it had of having the same profile as the previous moon landing.

Conrad and Bean were also thwarted when it came to attempting something that was about five decades ahead of its time - taking a selfie.

They had brought an automatic timer for the cameras, without telling Mission Control, and had hoped to take a selfie with it, but could not find it among their lunar samples they had collected.

Their samples were mostly basalts, dark igneous rocks, hundreds of millions of years younger than the rocks collected by Apollo 11.

Read more: NASA is opening up Apollo moon rock samples untouched for 50 years

The trio, who had all met as pilots in the US Navy, shared a great camaraderie, rocking out to Dusty Springfield and Elvis Presley songs while in space - Conrad had brought a tape deck with him.

Official transcripts of the mission record Conrad as humming and singing along the lunar surface.

“Boy, do I like to run up here,” he said at one point. “This is neat!”

Compared to the tension during Apollo 11, when the pressure on the astronauts to successfully land on the moon was enormous, the Apollo 12 atmosphere was more raucous.

Conrad let Bean control the lunar module at one stage, even though it would have been against Mission Control orders, and the astronauts found raunchy surprises in their binder checklists strapped to the arms of their suits - their back-up crew had slipped pictures of Playboy models into the folders as a prank.

Once off the moon and back in their Command and Service Module (CSM), callsign Yankee Clipper, the crew were able to view a solar eclipse, when Earth came between their craft and the sun. Bean said it was the most spectacular sight of the mission.

Their splashdown back on Earth took place on 24 November, with Yankee Clipper landing in the Pacific Ocean. A camera on board struck Bean in the head upon landing.

Yankee Clipper is on display at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Conrad and Bean spent one day, seven hours and 31 minutes on the surface of the moon, a lot longer than the 21 hours and 31 minutes enjoyed by Armstrong and Aldrin.

The pair remain two of only 12 people to walk on the moon, all of whom did so between 1969 and 1972.

Watch: Five decades since astronauts first orbited the moon