{"id":550943,"date":"2026-07-15T12:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T12:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/550943\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T12:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T12:41:10","slug":"one-small-pen-for-one-giant-fee-buzz-aldrins-mission-saving-felt-tip-up-for-auction-buzz-aldrin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/550943\/","title":{"rendered":"One small pen for one giant fee: Buzz Aldrin\u2019s mission-saving felt-tip up for auction | Buzz Aldrin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The felt-tip pen Buzz Aldrin<\/a> used to fix a broken circuit breaker and escape from the moon in 1969 is up for auction in New York.<\/p>\n

The dented silver plastic Duro Rocket pen \u2013 used by the second man on the moon to save Neil Armstrong and himself from being \u201cstuck on the moon for ever\u201d \u2013 has a sale price estimated by Sotheby\u2019s<\/a> at between $800,000 and $1.2m. The lucky bidder will get the broken piece of circuit breaker, too. Both come from Aldrin\u2019s personal collection.<\/p>\n

Armstrong and Aldrin had landed on the lunar surface on the historic Apollo 11<\/a> mission in July 1969 and were preparing to get some sleep after their first moon walk, when Aldrin noticed a small black switch on the floor of the cabin.<\/p>\n

As he writes in his 2009 autobiography Magnificent Desolation: \u201cMy heart jolted a bit \u2026 The broken switch had snapped off from the engine-arm circuit breaker, the one vital breaker needed to send electrical power to the ascent engine that would lift Neil and me off the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BuzzThe pen is expected to go for between $800,000 and $1.2m. Photograph: Sotheby\u2019s<\/p>\n

In the letter of provenance provided by Sotheby\u2019s, Aldrin jokes: \u201cI think Neil broke the switch off and Neil thinks that I broke the switch off.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his 2016 book No Dream Is Too High, however, Aldrin was more willing to take the blame for the incident. \u201cBecause the breaker was located on my side of the capsule, I had apparently bumped it with the heavy backpack either preparing to step outside or when we had come back inside after walking on the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Either way, as Aldrin says in the Sotheby\u2019s letter: \u201cIn the end, what mattered most was that we had to figure out how to solve the problem of the broken switch so that we could leave the lunar surface and get home to Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The astronauts reported the issue to Mission Control, who hoped to reroute the power from that circuit. But by morning Houston had been unable to fix it, and informed Aldrin and Armstrong bluntly: \u201cThere is no way to reroute the power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that if I could find something in the LM [lunar module] to push into the circuit, it might hold,\u201d Aldrin writes in his autobiography. \u201cBut since it was electrical, I decided not to put my finger in, or use anything that had metal on the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buzz Aldrin, one of four men still alive who walked on the moon, believes Mars should be Nasa\u2019s next mission. Photograph: Angela Weiss\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Suddenly, Aldrin thought of a black felt-tip pen he had brought as part of his \u201cpersonal preference kit\u201d \u2013 a set of personal items each astronaut was allowed to take onboard. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t in the official list of items we took to the moon,\u201d he says in No Dream Is Too High, \u201cbut I now had that pen in the shoulder pocket of my space suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cI gingerly pressed the pen against the engine arm circuit breaker. For a long moment, I didn\u2019t want to remove the tip from the circuit breaker, hoping against hope that it would hold. Slowly, almost reluctantly, I eased the pressure on my hand and lifted the pen\u2019s tip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pen did the trick; the circuit breaker held. We could return to Earth after all!\u201d<\/p>\n

Aldrin, 96, is one of four men still alive who walked on the moon during the Apollo landings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died in 2012.<\/p>\n

Nasa is now planning a return trip to the lunar surface as early as 2028, and in April sent four astronauts around the moon and back<\/a> for the first time since 1972. China is also planning a crewed landing, with an apparent target of 2030.<\/p>\n

Aldrin has campaigned for Nasa to send astronauts to Mars and set up a base there. In 2013 he wrote in the New York Times<\/a>: \u201cA second \u2018race to the moon\u2019 is a dead end \u2026 In my view, US resources are better spent on moving toward establishing a human presence on Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI still have that broken circuit breaker from Apollo 11 and the felt-tip pen that helped get us off the moon,\u201d Aldrin wrote in 2016. On Wednesday they may pass to a new owner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The felt-tip pen Buzz Aldrin used to fix a broken circuit breaker and escape from the moon in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-550943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}