Key facts
- A US-based team of marine archaeologists is heading to Nikumaroro atoll in the Pacific to search for Amelia Earhart's lost plane.
- The expedition is backed by Purdue University, which has a historical affiliation with Earhart.
- The team will investigate a submerged object detected by satellite imagery in the island's lagoon.
- This search is based on the hypothesis that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crash-landed on the atoll.
- Rival explorer Ric Gillespie, a proponent of the Nikumaroro castaway theory, believes the object is a fallen tree, not airplane wreckage.
A team of marine archaeologists, supported by Purdue University, has embarked on an expedition to Nikumaroro, a remote island in the western Pacific, in pursuit of the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10-E aircraft, which disappeared in 1937.
The expedition's primary objective is to investigate a submerged object detected by satellite imagery six years ago in the island's lagoon. Proponents of the Nikumaroro castaway theory believe this object could be Earhart's plane, suggesting she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crash-landed and perished on the uninhabited atoll.
Richard Pettigrew, leading the effort, expressed that finding the Electra would be a "discovery of a lifetime." Steve Schultz, a Purdue representative, echoed this sentiment, calling it the solution to one of aviation's greatest mysteries.
However, the mission faces skepticism from rival explorer Ric Gillespie, who has led numerous expeditions to the atoll. Gillespie, a leading proponent of the castaway theory himself, believes the object in question is a fallen pandanus tree, not airplane wreckage. He suggests that if the plane did land intact, it has since been swept into the sea and broken apart by tides.
Previous attempts to locate the wreckage, including one in 2019 by Robert Ballard, have been unsuccessful. The Purdue team, however, points to earlier aerial images suggesting the object's presence in the lagoon since 1938.
The official US government stance has long been that Earhart's plane ran out of fuel and crashed at sea near Howland Island. Earhart, attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world, was last heard from on July 3, 1937, reporting low fuel. The subsequent US government search was the largest ever undertaken for a lost aircraft at the time, but yielded no trace of the Electra or its crew.