The pen that saved the lives of two American astronauts was auctioned for nearly 900,000 USD

57 years ago, astronaut Buzz Aldrin used a silver Duro Rocket felt-tip pen to connect the engine chip of the Eagle module after the switch broke during the landing on the Moon. There are still dents on the pen body left by the passing current. According to the Guardian, Sotheby's auction house in New York estimated the pen's price range from 800,000 to 1.2 million USD with 5 bidders and the final selling price was 857,600 USD. Along with the pen, the winner also received the broken circuit piece, both of which came from astronaut Aldrin's personal collection.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission. According to Popular Science, on July 20, 1969, when they were about to take a nap after the first 3-hour walk on the Moon to collect rock and dust samples, Aldrin discovered a small black switch on the cabin floor, broken off from the engine's electrical circuit. This is an important circuit that helps provide power to the engine used to take two astronauts off the Moon.

"Because the circuit was on my side of the capsule, it's possible I bumped into it while putting on my heavy backpack in preparation for stepping out or when we returned from the Moonwalk," Aldrin shared in his 2016 book "No Dream Is Too High."

The astronauts reported the problem to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, who redirected power from the circuit. But the next morning, the center announced that the circuit could not be repaired. Suddenly, Aldrin remembered the marker he carried in his personal kit and pressed it into the engine's circuit. The pen did a good job of helping the engine work again, so Armstrong and Aldrin could fly back to Earth.

According to Smithsonian, NASA leaders seriously considered the circuit breaker incident. On subsequent lunar modules, engineers installed additional switch protection to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. After Aldrin returned, NASA gave him a pen and a circuit breaker. The two items have been on display for many years at the Seattle Air & Space Museum and the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.

Aldrin, 96 years old, is one of four people who walked on the lunar surface during the Apollo landings from the late 1960s to early 1970s, still alive today. Armstrong, the first astronaut to set foot on the Moon, passed away in 2012.

NASA is planning to return to the Moon as early as 2028 with the Artemis program. In April, four NASA astronauts flew around the Moon and returned to Earth on the Artemis 2 mission.