Up to date Oct. 5, 2026, 4:00 p.m. ET
An expedition started on Oct. 2 as researchers left Purdue College on a mission that hopes to search out the misplaced airplane of flier Amelia Earhart, who went lacking alongside together with her navigator Fred Noonan in 1937.
Three members of the Taraia Object expedition, a joint effort among the many Indiana-based college, Purdue’s Archaeological Legacy Institute and the Purdue Analysis Basis, then traveled from Los Angeles to satisfy others within the 17-person workforce. Subsequent, they will journey to Fiji and Kiribati within the South Pacific looking for the Lockheed Electra 10-E flown by Earhart practically 90 years in the past.
On Oct. 7, your entire group will journey to Nikumaroro, a distant Pacific island between Australia and Hawaii, the place a well-liked concept suggests Earhart and Noonan landed after failing to finish their journey to circle the globe on the equator.
“I’m feeling very assured about this,” lead archaeologist Richard Pettigrew beforehand instructed USA TODAY. “I am pumped.”
The search, one in every of numerous efforts to find the misplaced aviator since her disappearance, facilities across the “Taraia object,” a visible anomaly found by satellite tv for pc imagery within the island’s lagoon.
The mission, initially set for October 2025, was delayed on account of climate circumstances. Permission from Kiribati’s authorities was additionally an element; Kiribati is the island nation that controls Nikumaroro, and has now allowed the mission to proceed.
“My acutely aware focus is on the execution of our fieldwork plan,” Richard Pettigrew, govt director of the Purdue Archaeological Legacy Institute, stated in a information launch a number of weeks earlier than the expedition. “…I really feel actually fortunate to be able to probably clear up one of many biggest mysteries of all time, whether or not or not that occurs.”
What occurred to Amelia Earhart?
Earhart was already a famed pilot when she and Noonan set out from Lae, Papua New Guinea, towards Howland Island, the place a U.S. Coast Guard cutter waited to refuel the Lockheed Electra 10-E. They’d begun their around-the-world journey on Could 21, 1937 in Oakland, California, however disappeared on July 2 as they neared the tip of the journey, which might have been the primary time anybody had flown around the globe on the equator.
Earhart messaged the Coast Guard to say she was nearly out of gasoline, however neither she nor Noonan knew Morse code, so there was no two-way contact, in accordance with the Smithsonian Establishment’s evaluation of presidency information of the incident.
Nikumaroro is about 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, the place Earhart and Noonan deliberate to land on the third-to-last leg of their try to circumnavigate the world across the equator. The U.S. authorities performed what was on the time its largest-ever seek for a misplaced plane, however after two weeks, with no hint of both Earhart, Noonan or their airplane, the search ended. On Jan. 5, 1939, each had been declared legally lifeless.
One present concept is that Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro, however later died there. That concept is predicated on satellite tv for pc imagery of the unidentified object in a lagoon on the island that got here into view in 2015, in addition to radio bearings that converge there, human bones found on the island that resemble Earhart’s measurements and artifacts together with a girl’s shoe, a jar of freckle cream and a medication vial that date to the Thirties, in accordance with the Purdue Analysis Basis.
‘The invention of a lifetime’
The expedition will begin with video and nonetheless photographs of the positioning earlier than any work on the positioning begins, adopted by distant magnetometer and sonar. The workforce will then use an underwater hydraulic dredge to reveal the item so it may be recognized, and a walk-over survey of close by land surfaces to test for any particles that may be washed up onshore.
Pettigrew referred to as the potential for discovering and figuring out Earhart’s misplaced plane “the invention of a lifetime,” and confirming the wreckage of a airplane “the smoking-gun proof” of theories that positioned her and Noonan on Nikumaroro.
What occurs if Amelia Earhart’s airplane is discovered?
The Purdue Analysis Basis initially funded the Lockheed Electra “Flying Laboratory” by the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Analysis, so the establishment hopes to return the airplane or its remnants to Purdue, citing what it referred to as “her intention to return it to the college.”
The Purdue Archaeological Legacy Institute stated in a information launch that “extra work and additional conversations with Kiribati would nonetheless be wanted to make {that a} actuality, however we really feel we owe it to her legacy at Purdue to attempt to discover a option to convey it residence if we discover it.”
In the identical launch, Purdue quoted a Kiribati official who stated the island of Nikumaroro is “a part of our heritage,” and famous that nation’s “duty to guard and higher perceive it.”
“For Kiribati, Nikumaroro is rather more than the doable setting for one of many world’s nice historic mysteries,” stated Mikarite Temari, head of Kiribati’s Ministry of Line and Phoenix Islands Improvement. The nation is completely happy to work with Purdue, Temari added. “We additionally see this expedition as a chance to construct an enduring partnership that may assist help necessary priorities resembling regenerative tourism, cultural preservation, training, advances in aviation expertise and financial growth for our folks.”
Contributing: Christopher Cann, USA TODAY
Phaedra Trethan is a nationwide correspondent for USA TODAY, writing about historical past and Americana. Contact her by electronic mail at ptrethan@usatoday.com, on X @wordsbyphaedra, on BlueSky @byphaedra, or on Threads @by_phaedra.
