It's one of aviation's greatest mysteries: what happened to Amelia Earhart?
She began flying lessons in 1921 and earned her pilot's license in 1923. From 1928 to 1935, she had several notable aviation achievements, including becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean as an airplane passenger in 1928, being the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic and across the United States in 1932, and becoming the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California.
She also established the Ninety-Nines in 1929, an organization to support women pilots. She served as the group's first president.
In 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, attempted to circumnavigate the world in a Lockheed Electra 10E. They left Miami, Florida, on June 1. By July 2, they had completed about 22,000 miles of their planned 29,000-mile journey. That's the day the plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean en route from Lae, New Guinea toward Howland Island. Earhart and Noonan planned to refuel on Howland Island.
Despite a massive search effort by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, Earhart and Noonan were never found and she was declared dead on January 5, 1939. The widely accepted theory is that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Howland Island. Although other theories exist, none have been definitively confirmed.
Now, an expedition searching a remote island in the South Pacific is hoping to finally locate Earhart's plane.
A 17-member expedition has reached a remote island in the South Pacific to search for Amelia Earhart’s missing plane. The team is investigating a never-before-explored object spotted in satellite imagery that could be the Lockheed Electra Earhart was flying when she disappeared… pic.twitter.com/0LHeuHEyea
— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) October 14, 2026
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"We're looking at the land, we're looking for artifacts that might relate to Amelia Earhart," Pettigrew told CBS News on Wednesday.
"We're still very much in the data-gathering phase," Schultz added.
Members of the expedition are searching a lagoon off the coast of Nikumaroro. They are focused on inspecting what is known as the Taraia Object, a visual anomaly that has been visible in aerial photos dating back to 1938 but was first noticed in satellite imagery in 2020. That satellite imagery is what inspired the new expedition.
Stormy weather hindered their efforts on Wednesday, but expedition members said they expect to have a definitive answer on the object in the coming days.
The search area is so remote, it took the 17-member expedition team five days at sea to reach it.
We should know within a matter of days if they have located anything belonging to Earhart, including her plane.
Nikumaroro Island is an uninhabited coral atoll in the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati. While not populated by people, it is home to coconut crabs.
Crew searching for Amelia Earhart arrives at crab-infested island https://t.co/9VONZaZlSP
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 12, 2026
The crew will begin dredging sediment to inspect the object seen in the 2020 satellite imagery. It's located only 10 feet from shore, in as little as five feet of water, depending on the tides. The crabs and ongoing weather conditions caused by El Niño mean the researchers will travel to and from the island and sleep aboard their ship.
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