The space jacket worn by Buzz Aldrin while flying to the Moon has sold at a New York auction for $2.8m (£2.3m).

Adorned with a US flag and Nasa logo, Mr Aldrin wore the white in-flight jacket while speeding through space in Apollo 11's command module Columbia.

It is one of 69 personal belongings that the 92-year-old has decided to put up for sale.

The jacket was sold by Sotheby's and becomes the most valuable American space artefact ever sold at auction.

The former astronaut travelled to the Moon in 1969 and is the only living member of the mission's three-man crew.

Mr Aldrin spent the majority of the six-day journey in space wearing the inflight jacket, changing out of it only mid-way through to swap into a pressure suit for stepping on to the lunar surface itself.

An estimated 650 million people from around the world watched the moment on television.

After spending more than 21 hours on the Moon, he and Neil Armstrong then returned to the Apollo mission and changed back into their in-flight jackets, which he described as "much more comfortable" in a note accompanying the item.

Manufactured out of a fire-resistant material known as Beta cloth, this Teflon-coated white jacket is the only piece of clothing from the 1969 space mission ever to have been sold.

Bidding for the item lasted for almost 10 minutes before it went to an unidentified bidder over the phone, according to Sotheby's which handled the sale.

Other personal belongings also put up for auction include a broken circuit breaker switch and the black felt-tip pen Mr Aldrin used to fix it with quick thinking - preventing the crew from becoming stranded on the Moon.

In total, items from the astronaut's personal collection sold for $8.2m (£6.8m), including a flight plan that travelled to space and back with the crew that was bought for $819,000 (£680,000).

Source: BBC

BDST: 1500 HRS, July 27, 2022
MN