Alan LaVern Bean (March 15, 1932 – May 26, 2018) was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, NASA astronaut and painter.

After retiring from the United States Navy in 1975 and NASA in 1981, Bean pursued his interest in painting, depicting various space-related scenes and documenting his own experiences in space as well as those of his fellow Apollo program astronauts.

[14] Bean received a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1955, where he attended on a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship.

[13] In January 1955, Bean was commissioned a U.S. Navy ensign through the NROTC at the University of Texas at Austin, and attended flight training.

[12] After completing flight training in June 1956, he was assigned to Attack Squadron 44 (VA-44) at NAS Jacksonville, Florida, from 1956 to 1960, flying the F9F Cougar and A4D Skyhawk.

Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS) at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, where his instructor was his future Apollo 12 Commander, Pete Conrad, graduating in November 1960.

[7][13] Bean took art classes at St. Mary's College of Maryland during this tour,[17] and flew as a test pilot on several types of naval aircraft.

[21] When fellow astronaut Clifton Williams was killed in an air crash, a space was opened for Bean on the backup crew for Apollo 9.

In November 1969, Bean and Pete Conrad landed on the Moon's Ocean of Storms—after a flight of 250,000 miles and a launch that included a harrowing lightning strike.

He was the astronaut who executed John Aaron's "Flight, try SCE to 'Aux'" instruction to restore telemetry after the spacecraft was struck by lightning 36 seconds after launch, thus salvaging the mission.

[19] Bean had planned on using a self-timer for his Hasselblad camera to take a photograph of both Pete Conrad and himself while on the lunar surface near the Surveyor III spacecraft.

[19] On his next assignment, Bean was the backup spacecraft commander of the United States flight crew for the joint American-Russian Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

He said his decision was based on that, in his 18 years as an astronaut, he was fortunate enough to visit worlds and see sights no artist's eye, past or present, has ever viewed firsthand and he hoped to express these experiences through his art.

[29] In July 2009, for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Bean exhibited his lunar paintings at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

[31] In recognition of his Scottish ancestry, Bean stated: As I remember it, I took Clan McBean tartan to the Moon and returned it to Earth.

[47] Bean was the recipient of Fédération Aéronautique Internationale's prestigious Yuri Gagarin Gold Medal for 1973 in Sydney, Australia.

[49] Bean was a co-recipient of AIAA's Octave Chanute Award for 1975, along with fellow Skylab 3 astronauts Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott.

[52] Swedish indie pop artist Stina Nordenstam has a song called "The Return of Alan Bean" on her 1991 debut album Memories of a Color.

[54] For her 2019 novel, America Was Hard to Find, American writer Kathleen Alcott based her description of the Apollo landing on interviews she conducted with Bean.