Billionaire recovers Apollo engines

Apollo F-1 engines have been recovered from the ocean floor five kilometers beneath the Atlantic

AMAZON founder Jeff Bezos has found the engines which boosted Apollo 11 towards the moon - at the bottom of the Atlantic Ccean.

The tech billionaire made it a personal mission in 2012 to find and recover the engines. After three weeks at sea, a deep-sea robot has found them.

"We found so much. We've 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," he posted on a personal blog.

"Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible."

The remains of the buckled and corroded engines were found more than 4200m beneath the surface.

The Apollo F1 thrust chamber on the Atlantic Ocean sea floor. Picture: Bezos Expeditions

Bezos, who fully funded the search and recovery project himself, plans to work with NASA to restore the original engines and place them on public display.

"We share the excitement expressed by Jeff and his team in announcing the recovery of two of the powerful Saturn V first-stage engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean," NASA said in a statement.

Bezos is noted for his ambitious and expensive projects. He has founded his own space-travel company, Blue Origins, and spent $42 million to develop and build a clock capable of running for 10,000 years.

Crew aboard the Seabed Worker examine the F1 engine thrust chamber after it was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. Picture: Bezos Expeditions

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