Researchers Begin Voyage to Search for Amelia Earhart’s Plane

What changed

Researchers from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University have begun an 830-mile voyage from Kiribati to Nikumaroro Island, hoping to inspect a suspected aircraft wreck linked to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. They expect to reach the remote Pacific atoll by Monday and investigate the “Taraia Object,” seen in satellite imagery from 2020 and in aerial photographs dating to 1938.

Why it matters

Earhart vanished in 1937 while flying her Electra toward Howland Island. No physical evidence of the aircraft has ever been recovered, so even a damaged fragment could reshape one of aviation’s most durable mysteries.

The location fits one theory: Earhart may have reached Nikumaroro, ditched the plane and died there. But the object itself is far from identified. Ric Gillespie, a specialist in historic aircraft wrecks, believes it resembles a fallen tree and suspects any plane wreckage would have broken apart and sunk into the Pacific.

That leaves the expedition with a narrow target and a large burden of proof. Finding an object is one thing. Showing that it is an aircraft, and then tying it to Earhart’s Electra, would require far more than a striking image in shallow water.