Expedition to Mysterious Object Believed to be Amelia Earhart’s Plane Ends in a Dead End

A recent expedition to a remote island in the South Pacific in search of the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s missing aeroplane proved fruitless.

Researchers found no conclusive evidence that Earhart landed her Lockheed 10E Electra on or near the small atoll (coral island) south of the initial stopover point on her ill-fated flight nearly 90 years ago.

The trip to the suspected site, Nikumaroro Island, was a joint effort led by the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) and Purdue University. A team of 17 researchers and technicians arrived on the island on 12 October.

The primary objective was to examine a blurry object in the lagoon known as the Taraia Object, first detected in satellite imagery in 2020. Team leader and archaeologist Rick Pettigrew believes the aircraft-like shape is the wreckage of Earhart’s plane.

However, the expedition found no conclusive evidence to confirm the hypothesis that the wreckage of Earhart’s aeroplane lies in a lagoon on a remote atoll in the South Pacific.

The visual anomaly in the satellite imagery from six years ago was most likely a cluster of large trees piled up. “When the team arrived at the site, most of the wreckage had disintegrated and been washed away,” said Purdue University.

“The evidence for the castaway hypothesis, which brought us here, remains very strong. We think it is highly likely that Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, actually ended up here, on Nikumaroro Island,” said Pettigrew, executive director of ALI.

Earhart and Noonan disappeared on 2 July 1937, whilst attempting a daring feat to become the first woman to fly round the world. The pair were last seen taking off from Lae, New Guinea, on a journey estimated to take 18 hours to Howland Island, a small landmass in the Pacific Ocean.

For decades, historians and researchers have debated how and where they disappeared. The official conclusion of the US government-led search immediately following their disappearance suggested that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and that their Electra aircraft crashed into the Pacific near their intended destination.

Others, such as the leaders of this latest expedition, suspect that Earhart and Noonan landed their aircraft 644 kilometres away on or near Nikumaroro Island and were stranded there, possibly dying of thirst or starvation.

Repeated attempts to locate Earhart’s aircraft, including further searches around Nikumaroro, have yet to yield any new clues.

“Nikumaroro Island has been searched more than 15 times, without result. They are one of many parties who have yet to find authentic evidence of the Electra’s presence, or of Amelia or Noonan, on Nikumaroro,” said Dorothy Cochrane, an Earhart expert.

In 2024, the marine exploration company Deep Sea Vision detected an object resembling an aeroplane in the sea some 160 kilometres from Howland, but it turned out to be nothing more than a rock.

The 2019 expedition to Nikumaroro, led by oceanographer Bob Ballard – the discoverer of the Titanic wreck – also ended in disappointment.

Researchers on this latest search surveyed Nikumaroro’s lagoon using a magnetometer to detect iron and employed sonar technology to search for objects beneath the lagoon’s seabed sediments. “We achieved our primary objective, which was to come here and test that hypothesis,” said Pettigrew.

Nikumaroro, which is currently part of the Republic of Kiribati, is an uninhabited island surrounded by coral reefs in the South Pacific. The island is so remote that it took the team five days to reach it by sea from the capital of Kiribati.

The Purdue Research Foundation funded Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft, and Earhart intended to return the aircraft to Purdue after completing her historic flight.

Earhart was very close to her destination when she went missing. She had flown 35,405 kilometres when last seen, leaving 11,265 kilometres to complete.

Purdue’s search for Earhart’s aircraft is unlikely to be the last. The deep-sea exploration company, Nauticos, is attempting to raise between USD 8 and 10 million to fund what they hope will be the final expedition to the waters around Howland Island.