A joint expedition by the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) and Purdue University is traveling to Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati to investigate a submerged feature known as the "Taraia Object," which researchers say may be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's missing Lockheed Electra 10-E. The object's identity has not been confirmed, and the team's working hypothesis is disputed by other investigators.
The expedition began on Oct. 2 as researchers departed Purdue University, according to USA Today. Team members were scheduled to rendezvous in Tarawa, Kiribati, on Oct. 6 and sail the following day for Nikumaroro, a six-day voyage, with arrival expected around Oct. 13. The 17-person team plans roughly five days of fieldwork on the uninhabited island before returning to Tarawa around Oct. 22.
The mission centers on a visual anomaly first spotted in satellite imagery of Nikumaroro's lagoon in 2020. Researchers believe Tropical Cyclone Pam, which struck the region in March 2015, may have shifted sediment and exposed an object that had previously been buried. ALI also says the object is likely visible in two frames of aerial film taken by the New Zealand military over the lagoon in 1938, a year after Earhart's disappearance.
What the team plans to do
Expedition leader Richard Pettigrew, executive director of ALI, said the team has a single objective: examine the object and identify it. The plan calls for video and still images of the site before any disturbance, followed by remote sensing with magnetometers and sonar, and then underwater excavation using a hydraulic dredge to expose the object for identification. A walk-over survey of nearby land surfaces will search for debris washed up by waves.
"Finding Amelia Earhart's Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime," Pettigrew said in a Purdue news release. "Other evidence already collected by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery establishes an extremely persuasive, multifaceted case that the final destination for Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan was on Nikumaroro. Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof."
A disappearance that launched nearly 90 years of searching
Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, during an attempt to fly around the world at the equator. They had taken off from Lae, New Guinea, bound for Howland Island, a tiny outpost where a U.S. Coast Guard vessel waited to refuel the Electra. Earhart's last known transmissions indicated she was low on fuel and could not see the island; neither the flyers nor the aircraft were ever found, and both were declared legally dead in 1939.
The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard mounted what was then the largest search ever conducted for a lost aircraft, covering nearly 250,000 square miles of the Pacific over 16 days. A U.S. Navy report later reaffirmed that "no evidence of aircraft remains was discovered within the search radius."
Purdue's connection
Purdue's involvement is rooted in its historical ties to Earhart. She joined the university in 1935 as a women's career counselor and advisor to the aeronautics department. The Purdue Research Foundation funded her Lockheed Electra 10-E through the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research.
Steve Schultz, Purdue's senior vice president and general counsel and a member of the expedition team, said the university hopes any recovered wreckage could eventually be returned to Purdue, though that would require further permission from the Kiribati government.
A leading skeptic
Ric Gillespie, co-founder and executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), does not believe the Taraia Object is related to Earhart's flight. Gillespie, who has visited Nikumaroro roughly a dozen times and is the leading proponent of the castaway hypothesis the Purdue team hopes to prove, said he is certain the object is a fallen pandanus tree.
"You can see the root ball. You can see the branches," Gillespie told Reuters. "It's a tree. People see what they want to see." Gillespie argues the Electra was likely washed off the coral reef into the sea and broken apart long ago, and he has predicted the expedition will find no airplane wreckage. ALI rejects the tree explanation, saying the object's dimensions, reflectivity and apparent longevity do not match fallen trees observed on the island.
A recent cautionary precedent
The expedition follows a widely publicized false lead. In January 2024, South Carolina-based Deep Sea Vision released a sonar image of a plane-shaped target roughly 16,000 feet below the Pacific, about 100 miles from Howland Island. A return expedition later that year produced high-resolution images showing the target was a natural rock formation.
Deep Sea Vision had based its search area partly on the "Date Line theory," which suggests Noonan made a 60-mile westward navigational error by forgetting to turn the calendar back one day while crossing the International Date Line.
What is confirmed, unknown and awaited
Confirmed: the ALI-Purdue expedition is underway to Nikumaroro with the permission of Kiribati's government; the Taraia Object exists in satellite imagery dating to 2015 and possibly in 1938 aerial photographs; Earhart and Noonan vanished in July 1937 and were never found.
Unknown: whether the Taraia Object is aircraft wreckage, wreckage from another source, a natural feature, or something else. Researchers have not yet examined it directly.
Awaited: the team's field findings, expected after the expedition completes its work on Nikumaroro in late October. Pettigrew has said that if the object proves to be the Electra, a full-scale excavation would be planned for the following year.
Sources: Purdue University, USA Today, CBS News, Newsweek, National Geographic, Reuters via The Star, NPR, The Public's Radio, AOPA, Fox News, CNN en Español, Archaeology Channel.