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THE astronauts who made the historic moon landing in 1969 almost ended up stranded there, new evidence reveals.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin accidentally snapped off the switch of a circuit breaker - and they could not take off again without it.

But Aldrin improvised by jamming the end of a ballpoint pen into the hole where the switch had been and the astronauts' landing module was able to lift off the moon's surface.

It was one of a string of near disasters that threatened to turn the triumph of Armstrong's famous "one small step for man" moonwalk into a tragedy.

A new documentary says the Americans were so eager to beat the Soviets to a moon landing they launched their mission more in hope than expectation

Such was the danger that US President Richard Nixon had prepared an address to the nation announcing the deaths of Apollo 11 trio Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins.

Aldrin, now 76, told filmmakers how his heart sank when he suddenly realised the vital switch had been broken - probably as one of the astronauts brushed against it in a bulky spacesuit.

He said: "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.

"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."

Apollo 11: The Untold Story, screened tonight on Five, gives new insight into the crisis when the landing module was thrown off course by a computer breakdown just as it was about to land.

As the astronauts frantically tried to work out what was wrong the module drifted and they became dangerously short of fuel. At one stage they were still 100ft from landing but with only 60 seconds of fuel left in the tanks.

Aldrin told the documentary: "Without trying to disturb Neil's concentration my body language was urging him to 'Get on the ground as soon as you can.'

Armstrong managed to land with just 15 seconds of fuel left. Secret documents made available for the first time show how NASA bosses failed to tell the astronauts that the escape procedures they had been taught could well be useless.

The escape plan they were banking on would only work if the giant Saturn V rocket that powered their craft had already broken off.

The US Government had already ordered NASA to cut links with the astronauts if disaster loomed.

They did not want the world watching pictures of the Americans spinning off into space.

Aldrin also told how the astronauts believed they saw a UFO during the flight - but NASA covered it up for thirty years.

He said: There was something out there that was close enough to be observed.'

The show also highlights how primitive the moon landing technology was.

There is as much power in a modern digital watch as there was in the lunar module and the computing power of Houston's Mission Control was the equivalent of a laptop today.

PRINCE HARRY IN SPACE: SEE PAGE 23

m.swain@ mirror.co.uk