Amazon CEO to aid Apollo 11′s engine recovery
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, is heading the expedition to recover the discarded engines from the Apollo 11 missions.
Using a high-tech sonar, Bezos and his team are planning to search the deep Atlantic to find the engine that helped launch the rocket that would carry Neil Armstrong to the moon back in 1969.
This announcement comes as a shock to the public, as well as NASA. Bezos had announced via his Bezos Expeditions website that his team had discovered one of the five engines that pushed the Saturn V rocket and its three astronauts into space.
It is not yet clear how exactly the team came across this engine, nor the cost or time it will take to recover it. It is also unclear what condition the engine will be in. The original launch of the rocket produced 7.7 million pounds of thrust and hit the ocean at an extremely high velocity. It has been sitting on the ocean floor in salt water for 40 years.
NASA has full ownership of the engines, but Bezos hopes that they will be able to display it in a museum. As a life-long space enthusiast, Bezos is thrilled that NASA is showing excitement in this discovery.
“There has always been great interest in artifacts from the early days of space exploration and his announcement only adds to the enthusiasm of those interested in NASA’s history,” said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs.
