A team of researchers is traveling to a remote Pacific island to search for what could be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane. Earhart, a famous American pilot, disappeared in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world. Her disappearance has remained an unsolved mystery for nearly ninety years.
The expedition includes researchers from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University in the United States. They are heading to Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Their goal is to inspect something called the Taraia Object, which sits at the edge of a lagoon near the island. It was first noticed in satellite pictures in 2020, and older aerial photos from 1938 also showed the same object.
The team began their 830-mile journey on Wednesday from the capital of Kiribati aboard the ship Marin Mainiku. They are expected to reach the island by Monday. When they arrive, the crew must carefully guide their ship through a narrow opening in the coral reef. The British created this opening in 1963, the last time anyone lived on the island.
Richard Pettigrew, the expedition leader and head of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, said that finding Earhart's Electra airplane would be "the discovery of a lifetime." If the researchers confirm that the object is indeed the missing aircraft, they could finally solve one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.