Apollo 11 Engines Found on Ocean Floor

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says he's discovered the watery resting place of the engines that blasted Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew toward the moon in 1969—and he's not planning on leaving them there. A Bezos Expeditions team found the five F-1 engines at the bottom of the Atlantic, and Bezos aims to bring at least one of them back to dry land from below 14,000 feet of water, USA Today reports.

The engines produced 7.7 million pounds of thrust in less than three minutes, and brought the Saturn V rocket up to an altitude of 38 miles before plummeting into the ocean. It's not known what condition the engines are in after 43 years in salt water, but "they're made of tough stuff, so we'll see," Bezos writes in a blog post. The engines are still the property of NASA, notes Bezos, who expects the first engine recovered to end up in the Smithsonian. If another one can be salvaged, he'd like to see it go to Seattle's Museum of Flight. (More Apollo 11 stories.)