After 44 Years On the Sea Floor, Rocket Engines Identified as Apollo 11’s

On the eve of the 44^th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and self-professed Apollo 11 devotee, announced that the rocket engine remnants he found in the ocean months ago are definitely from that momentous mission.

Bezos knows the significance of his team's discovery, saying in a blog post Friday, "44 years ago tomorrow Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and now we have recovered a critical technological marvel that made it all possible."

That technological marvel is the engine - actually two F-1 engines - from the Apollo 11 mission. In March, Bezos announced that they had located and dredged up the engines, the result of his own complex and technologically advanced mission. At that time, the engine parts were badly warped and corroded. The seabed was, Bezos put it, "an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end."

The original serial numbers on the engine parts were missing or only survived, making mission identification difficult, but Bezos remained a cautious optimist, saying, "we might see more during restoration."

Well, they did see more during restoration. Bezos announced Friday how they identified the engines as the original thrusters that drove Apollo 11 the first step on its historic journey:

"Today, I'm thrilled to share some exciting news. One of the conservators who was scanning the objects with a black light and a special lens filter has made a breakthrough discovery - "2044" - stenciled in black paint on the side of one of the massive thrust chambers. 2044 is the Rocketdyne serial number that correlates to NASA number 6044, which is the serial number for F-1 Engine #5 from Apollo 11. The intrepid conservator kept digging for more evidence, and after removing more corrosion at the base of the same thrust chamber, he found it - "Unit No 2044" - stamped into the metal surface."

Bezos's mission brought back enough parts of the engines to eventually make them into displays. The rocket engines are still technically NASA's property, so he'll have to get permission, but it seems reasonable to suspect that NASA is thrilled about Bezos's discovery as well.

The mission Bezos undertook to recover the engines, which once propelled a Saturn V rocket into orbit, is just as unearthly as the Apollo program was at the time. Bezos used Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) at a depth of more than 14,000 feet. At that depth, working through fiber-optic cables for data transmission, Bezos said the ROVs and the ocean took on a space-like quality:

"We on the team were often struck by poetic echoes of the lunar missions. The buoyancy of the ROVs looks every bit like microgravity. The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep sea fish broke the illusion."

Check out the video from Bezos's mission to find the rockets that once sat alone, surrendered to the depths of the sea.