World · 16 July 2026
Apollo 11 pen and switch sell for over £670,000
Neil Armstrong via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-3.0)
On Wednesday, a felt-tip pen and a broken switch from the Apollo 11 mission fetched $857,600 at a Sotheby's auction. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin used the pen to push in a broken circuit breaker, which allowed the lunar module's engine to ignite for the return to Earth. The items were part of Sotheby's "Space Exploration" sale, which included more than 40 items from Aldrin's collection.
Reported by arstechnica.com · How we write briefs