Moon mission engines found in deep sea

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SEATTLE, March 29 (UPI) -- Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says his team of underwater searchers has found the rocket engines from the Apollo 11 mission that put the first men on the moon.

Writing on his blog Bezos Expeditions, Bezos said he was "excited to report" that his team of "undersea pros" had located the engines that launched the mission on July 16, 1969, that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The five F-1 engines, after firing and burning for a few minutes to send the Apollo mission on its way, fell into the Atlantic Ocean as planned.

The location of the engines has been unknown since then, prompting Bezos -- 5 years old at the time of the historic moon mission -- to mount a search.

"State-of-the-art deep sea sonar" located the engines 14,000 feet below the ocean surface, Bezos said, adding he was making plans to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor.

"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," he said. "On the other hand, they're made of tough stuff, so we'll see."

The engines are still the property of NASA, Bezos said, and if his privately funded team is able to recover any one of the engines that "started mankind on its first journey to another heavenly body, I imagine that NASA would decide to make it available to the Smithsonian for all to see."