[Apollo 12 remembered

In 1991, as Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad reviewed the transcripts of his conversations relayed from the moon back to Earth, the significance of the only known microbial survivor of harsh interplanetary travel struck him as profound:

"I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole...Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said [anything] about it."

Left, Above: Astronaut Pete Conrad (photographed by crew mate Alan Bean) inspects Surveyor 3's camera assembly. Surveyor 3 landed on the moon on April 20, 1967, at 2.94° S, 23.34° W in Oceanus Procellarum.On Nov. 12, 1969, Conrad and Bean piloted the Apollo 12 Lunar Module (background) to a landing 156 m (512 ft) away.

Although the space-faring microbe was described in a 1970 Newsweek article, along with features in Sky and Telescope and Aviation Week and Space Technology, the significance of a living organism surviving for nearly three years in the harsh lunar environment may only now be placed in perspective, after three decades of the biological revolution in understanding life and its favored conditions.]

From: http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01sep98_1.htm

After all it all came from my FAVORITE Apollo photo: