Pictures: Apollo space engines raised from seabed

LONG-SUNKEN pieces of two Apollo-era rocket engines that helped fire astronauts to the moon have been recovered from the Atlantic in a private mission led by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.

The expedition raised the main engine parts during three weeks at sea and was headed back to Cape Canaveral, Florida, the launch pad for the manned lunar missions.

“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,” Bezos wrote in an online posting on Wednesday.

Last year, the Bezos team used sonar to spot the sunken engines resting nearly 3 miles (5 kilometers) deep in the Atlantic and 360 miles (579 kilometers) from Cape Canaveral. At the time, the Internet mogul said the artifacts were part of the Apollo 11 mission that gave the world “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Bezos now says it’s unclear which Apollo mission the recovered engines belonged to because the serial numbers were missing or hard to read on the corroded pieces. NASA is helping trace the hardware’s origin.

Apollo astronauts were launched aboard the mighty Saturn V rocket during the 1960s and 1970s. Each rocket had a cluster of five engines. After lift-off, the engines - each weighing 18,000 pounds (8,166 kilograms) - fell to the ocean as designed, with no plans to retrieve them.

Bezos and his team sent underwater robots to hoist the engines, which are NASA property.

In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called the recovery “a historic find.”

Bezos plans to restore the engine parts, which included a nozzle, turbine, thrust chamber and heat exchanger. Amazon.com Inc. spokesman Drew Herdener declined Wednesday to reveal the cost of the recovery or restoration.