July 25, 2006 — The first men on the moon had to use a pen to fix a broken switch on their lunar module before returning to Earth, the British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported ahead of a new television documentary.
Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot the moon, and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., his fellow astronaut, accidentally snapped off the switch of a circuit breaker, and found they could not take off without it.
Aldrin then jammed a ballpoint pen into the hole where the switch had been, allowing the astronauts' lunar module Eagle to leave the surface of the moon.
According to the documentary "Apollo 11: The Untold Story", to be aired Monday on Britain's Channel Five television, the U.S. was so eager to beat the Soviet Union to putting a man on the moon, it launched its historic 1969 mission before it was completely prepared.
Then-president Richard Nixon even prepared an address to the nation announcing the deaths of Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins.
"In looking around at some of the lunar dust on the floor, I discovered something that really didn't belong there — a broken end of a circuit breaker," Aldrin told Channel Five in excerpts printed in the Daily Mirror.
"In the countdown procedure I used a pen, one of several that we had on board that didn't have metal on the end, and we used that to push the circuit breaker in."
The Daily Mirror reported that Aldrin, now 76, told filmmakers that his "heart sank" upon realizing the switch was broken, possibly by one of the stiff, bulky suits worn by the astronauts.
As the astronauts examined and repaired the module, precious fuel was lost, the Mirror reported. At landing, just 15 seconds of fuel remained. Documents recently made public show how NASA failed to tell the astronauts that their escape procedures could be useless.
The documentary also shows how the U.S. government ordered NASA to cut links with the astronauts if disaster was imminent, not wanting the world to watch images of American astronauts spinning off into space.
Aldrin revealed how the astronauts believed they saw an unidentified flying object during the flight as well, adding that NASA covered it up for 30 years.
"There was something out there that was close enough to be observed," Aldrin said.
