A 17-person expedition has landed on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro to inspect an underwater anomaly that could be the plane Amelia Earhart vanished in back in 1937.
The mission, reported by Fox News and aviation outlets, is run by the Archaeological Legacy Institute in Oregon together with Purdue University, and reached the island, part of Kiribati in the central Pacific, on 12 October after five days at sea. The team is there to examine the so-called Taraia Object, a shape first spotted on satellite images of the lagoon in 2020. “Finding Amelia Earhart’s Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime,” said the institute’s executive director, Richard Pettigrew.
Earhart, who was 39, disappeared on 2 July 1937 with her navigator Fred Noonan while attempting to fly around the world, after taking off from Lae in New Guinea bound for the tiny Howland Island. One long-standing theory holds that the pair instead came down on Nikumaroro, around 400 miles away, and died there as castaways. If the anomaly proves to be her Lockheed Electra, the team hopes to carry out a full excavation next year and eventually bring the aircraft back to Purdue, where Earhart once taught.
Who was Amelia Earhart?
Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and, in 1932, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, a feat that made her one of the most famous people in the world. She set a string of records and became a symbol of daring and of women breaking into a field long dominated by men.
Her disappearance over the Pacific in 1937 was never conclusively explained, and it turned her into one of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century. Decades of searches and rival theories have followed, and this latest expedition, backed by Purdue University, which helped pay for her final plane, is the newest attempt to solve it. A puzzle that has resisted answers for almost 90 years may finally be tested on the ground, and you can follow how the dig plays out in our latest news.
