$900,000 expedition heads to Nikumaroro to test Amelia Earhart theory

A team of marine archaeologists is heading to a remote Pacific island to investigate an object that could provide new clues to the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart in 1937.

Backed by Purdue University, the team will examine an object in a lagoon at Nikumaroro to determine whether it could be part of the Lockheed Electra aircraft Earhart was flying when she vanished.Amelia Earhart was an American aviator who became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. She disappeared in July 1937 while attempting to fly around the world with her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Their aircraft vanished over the Pacific, leaving one of aviation history’s most enduring mysteries.According to Purdue University, the object, known as the Taraia Object, was first spotted in satellite images in 2020 and is also visible in aerial photographs dating back to 1938. The expedition team believes its shape resembles an aircraft's body and wings, although the theory remains disputed.

Team to examine the object

The 17-member expedition is being led by Richard Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, working with Purdue University and the Purdue Research Foundation.

The team is travelling aboard the Kiribati National Shipping Line vessel Marin Mainiku to Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in Kiribati's Phoenix Islands.The researchers plan to spend five days on the island before returning to Tarawa, Kiribati’s capital. They will first use a drone to survey the area and then deploy specialized equipment to examine the object beneath the surface.The team plans to use sonar, which helps detect objects underwater, and magnetometers, which measure magnetic fields and can help identify metal objects.

After these surveys, the researchers intend to use a hydraulic dredge to uncover the object.“Finding Amelia Earhart's Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime,” Pettigrew said in materials released for the expedition.Steve Schultz, Purdue's senior vice president and general counsel, is leading the university's expedition team. Speaking to Reuters, he said finding the aircraft could resolve a longstanding aviation mystery.“This would be solving one of the great mysteries in aviation history, certainly one of the great mysteries of the 20th century,” Schultz said.The mission has a budget of $900,000. Purdue has a historical connection to Earhart, who worked at the university as a career counsellor for women and an adviser to its aeronautics department. A university research grant also helped fund the development of her Lockheed Electra aircraft, which she called her “flying laboratory”.

Why the island matters

Nikumaroro has long been at the centre of one theory about Earhart’s disappearance. Some researchers believe she and Noonan may have reached the island after failing to find Howland Island, where they had planned to refuel.According to this theory, the pair landed on or near Nikumaroro and died there. Supporters point to objects found on the island, including a glass jar from the 1930s used for freckle cream and parts of a pocketknife similar to one Earhart reportedly carried.Researchers have also examined measurements of human skeletal remains found on the island in the 1940s, radio signals recorded after the aircraft disappeared and a photograph of the island’s shoreline taken months later.Ric Gillespie, co-founder of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), has investigated the island through 12 expeditions over three decades. He has argued that an object visible in the shoreline photograph resembles the aircraft's landing gear.However, the evidence has not established that Earhart reached Nikumaroro. Gillespie told Reuters that two earlier searches for the aircraft in nearby waters, including a 2019 expedition led by marine archaeologist Robert Ballard, failed to locate the wreckage.The US government's longstanding position, as reported by Reuters, is that Earhart's aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea near Howland Island, about 400 miles northwest of Nikumaroro.

Researcher says the object could be a tree

Gillespie supports the broader possibility that Earhart reached the island but doubts the latest team will find the plane.He believes the object in the lagoon is actually a fallen pandanus tree, a palm-like plant native to the region. He says the images show the tree’s roots and branches.“You can see the root ball. You can see the branches,” Gillespie said. “It's a tree. People see what they want to see.”Gillespie believes that even if Earhart’s plane landed on the island, it may later have been swept into the sea by tides and broken apart by waves.“I'd love to find that airplane. It ain't gonna happen,” he said.The expedition team disagrees that the object can be dismissed without further investigation. It believes the shape seen in the images is worth examining more closely.

What happens if the team finds the plane?

The expedition will first try to establish what the object is. Schultz said the team would not remove any parts from the aircraft during this trip, even if the researchers identify it as Earhart’s plane.Any attempt to recover wreckage would require further permission from the Kiribati government.