Apollo 12 lifts off from Kennedy Space Center in November 1969, watched by thousands of spectators and President Richard Nixon, who becomes the first sitting president to attend a crewed launch in person. The film follows Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Richard Gordon as their Saturn V is struck by lightning twice in the first minute of flight, forcing a tense scramble in mission control to confirm the spacecraft's systems are still sound before continuing toward the Moon. Archival footage and mission audio cover the lunar landing near the Surveyor 3 probe, allowing Conrad and Bean to retrieve hardware left on the surface more than two years earlier for study back on Earth. The narration walks through the navigation challenges of landing within walking distance of a target site, the moonwalks conducted in the Ocean of Storms, and the splashdown that closes out only the second crewed landing on the Moon. It is a mission overshadowed by Apollo 11's fame but no less demanding.