A new expedition in the Pacific could offer answers in the nearly 90-year-old mystery of legendary pilot Amelia Earhart’s unsolved fate.
Virtually everyone has heard some version of Earhart’s story and the theories that surround her 1937 disappearance.
Earhart was attempting a historic feat: to become the first woman to fly around the world. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were flying from Lae, New Guinea, to the tiny Howland Island about 2,500 miles away on July 2, 1937, when they vanished without a trace. Less than two years later, the two were officially declared dead.
Researchers now hope to find out more about Earhart and Noonan’s final moments on an expedition this fall to locate what they believe may be the Lockheed 10-E Electra they were flying on when they disappeared.
The expedition team, which includes members from Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute, will investigate a visual anomaly in a lagoon on Nikumaroro, part of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. The team hopes to determine whether the anomaly, known as the “Taraia Object” and first spotted on satellites in 2020, is the remains of Earhart’s plane.
open image in gallery“I am feeling very confident about this,” Richard Pettigrew, the executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute and the leader of the expedition, told USA TODAY. “I’m pumped.”
As the theory goes, Earhart and Noonan landed on the remote island of Nikumaroro after failing to reach Howland Island.
Researchers list several pieces of evidence to support this theory, including human bones discovered on the island in 1940, which a 2018 analysis strongly suggested belonged to a woman of Earhart’s stature. There were also items found on the island, such as a woman’s shoe, compact case and freckle cream jar dating to the 1930s.
open image in gallery“The evidence supporting the Nikumaroro Hypothesis remains compelling, and the only way to answer this question is to go to Nikumaroro, inspect the Taraia Object firsthand and follow the evidence wherever it leads,” Pettigrew said in a July 24 press release.
The Taraia Object Expedition was first announced last year, but it was postponed while awaiting final approval from the government of Kiribati.
The expedition team will set sail from Tarawa, Kiribati, to Nikumaroro on October 7, according to the press release. The archaeologists, filmmakers, scuba personnel and other team members will be on the island for several days.
open image in galleryEarhart “challenged conventions, pushed the boundaries of what was possible and inspired countless others to do the same,” said Purdue’s senior vice president Steve Schultz, who will lead the university’s representatives on the expedition.
“As we prepare to embark on this expedition, we do so with a deep sense of responsibility to her legacy and a determination to seek answers that have eluded the world for decades,” Schultz said in last month’s press release.
Earhart was a counselor on careers for women at Purdue and an advisor in its Department of Aeronautics. The Purdue Research Foundation bought Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, and the university said she intended to return it after her trip around the world for future research.