A team of US researchers is approaching a remote Pacific atoll where they suspect famed aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed in 1937. The 17-person expedition aims to investigate a submerged object in the uninhabited island's sandy lagoon, which satellite images taken over several years have revealed.
These researchers, led by archaeologists who secured funding from Purdue University, hope the object will be identified as the wreckage of Earhart's Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. Separate aerial footage of the area reportedly suggested the submerged object has a metallic glint.
Richard Pettigrew, the expedition's leader, stated that finding Earhart's aircraft would be "the discovery of a lifetime." He added that confirming plane wreckage there would be "the smoking-gun proof."
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during their attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Locating the wreck would support the unproven hypothesis that they ditched at Nikumaroro, an atoll in Kiribati.
The research group is expected to arrive at the atoll on Tuesday local time after a six-day sea voyage. They plan to spend several days searching for the "Taraia Object," an elongated shape first noticed in a 2020 satellite image.
However, other longtime Earhart researchers have dismissed the satellite evidence, suggesting the object is probably a fallen tree. Ric Gillespie, co-founder of the US explorers group Tighar, stated that his teams visited the site in 2001 and 2007 with metal detectors and found nothing.