Adorned with a US flag and Nasa logo, Mr Aldrin wore the white inflight 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 onto the lunar surface itself.

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

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