Citation :
On November 14, 1969, Aaron was on shift for the launch of Apollo 12. Thirty-six seconds after liftoff, the spacecraft was struck by lightning, causing a power surge. Instruments began to malfunction and telemetry data became garbled. The flight director, Gerry Griffin, expected that he would have to abort the mission. However, Aaron realized that he had previously seen this odd pattern of telemetry.
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Aaron surmised that this setting would also return the Apollo 12 telemetry to normal. When he made the call to the Flight Director, "Flight, EECOM. Try SCE to Aux", most of his mission control colleagues had no idea what he was talking about. Both the flight director and the CAPCOM Gerald P. Carr asked him to repeat the recommendation. Aaron repeated himself and Carr responded "What the hell's that?" Yet he relayed the order to the crew: "Apollo 12, Houston. Try SCE to auxiliary." Dick Gordon, a ground expert on the CSM as well as the Apollo 12 command module pilot, was familiar with both the location and the function of the SCE switch, and instructed Alan Bean to flip it to aux. Telemetry was immediately restored, allowing the mission to continue. This earned Aaron the lasting respect of his colleagues, who declared that he was a "steely-eyed missile man".
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