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Photos: Apollo rocket engines raised off seafloor by Amazon CEO
March 20, 2013
— Long thought to be lost forever on the ocean floor, the massive engines that launched astronauts to the moon more than 40 years ago have been recovered by a private expedition led by the founder of Amazon.com.
"We found so much," said Jeff Bezos, the online retailer's CEO, in an update he posted Wednesday (March 20) on the Bezos Expeditions website. "We have seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program."
When NASA's Saturn V rockets were launched on missions to Earth orbit and the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the five F-1 engines that powered each of the boosters' first stages dropped into the Atlantic Ocean and sank to the sea floor. There they were expected to remain, discarded forever...