Buzz Aldrin's moon-saving pen up for auction

The felt-tip pen that saved Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong from being stranded on the moon is now up for auction in New York.

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My heart jolted a bit … 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.

Sotheby's estimates the dented silver plastic Duro Rocket pen will fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million. The sale also includes the broken piece of circuit breaker that Aldrin ingeniously repaired.

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I think Neil broke the switch off and Neil thinks that I broke the switch off.

During the historic 1969 mission, Aldrin discovered the vital breaker switch had snapped off. With Mission Control unable to reroute power, Aldrin recalled a felt-tip pen from his personal kit. He carefully used the pen to push the circuit breaker back into place, ensuring their safe return to Earth.

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Because 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.

Aldrin, who was the second man to walk on the moon, has a slightly varied account of how the switch broke, joking in one instance that Armstrong might have been responsible, while in another taking the blame for bumping it with his backpack. Regardless of fault, Aldrin emphasizes the critical need to solve the problem to get home.

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In 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.