Apollo 11 engines discovered in the Atlantic

credit: NASA

Engines from Apollo 11 moon flight found in the Atlantic
Salvage operation led by Amazon boss aims to recover engines that powered the first moon landing

Sam Jones
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 29 March 2012 13.14 EDT

Nearly 43 years after they thrust the Apollo 11 astronauts moonwards through a blue Florida sky, the mighty engines that helped deliver man to the Sea of Tranquillity have been found in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The five engines, last seen driving the Saturn V rocket free of the Earth on 16 July 1969, were found in a search led by the Amazon chief executive and space enthusiast Jeff Bezos, who hopes to recover at least one.

The engines took 2½ minutes to hurl the rocket 40 miles into the heavens before falling into the ocean. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon.

Amazon Boss-Jeff Bezos Photograph: Ted S. Warren/AP 

Bezos – who credits the Apollo 11 mission with fuelling his passion for science, engineering and exploration – embarked on the salvage mission a year ago after deciding it might be possible "with the right team of undersea pros".

"I'm excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we're making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor," Bezos wrote in a breathless blog post on Wednesday.

"We don't know yet what condition these engines might be in — they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years...

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