It's a Fresh Search for Amelia Earhart's Plane

A new push is underway to solve one of aviation's longest-standing mysteries: the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Researchers announced a November expedition to the Pacific island of Nikumaroro, spurred by a 2015 satellite image that some believe shows the remains of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E. The effort is being led by Purdue University, where Earhart once worked and which helped fund her 1937 flight with navigator Fred Noonan, who also vanished, reports NBC News. Purdue general counsel Steve Schultz said the university feels a responsibility "to fulfill her wishes, if possible, to bring the Electra back to Purdue."

Richard Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) says an object in the satellite photo—which was taken after a cyclone may have shifted the sand and is called the Taraia Object, per a press release—matches Earhart's aircraft in size and shape. He acknowledges it doesn't quite meet the level of a "smoking gun": Images taken after 2015 don't show the object. That said, Nikumaroro aligns with where some of Earhart's calls for help were believed to originate, per Pettigrew, who points to other clues found on the island, including a medicine vial and a freckle cream jar.

The team will have about five days on Nikumaroro to find and identify the object. Purdue has committed $500,000 for the first stage of the search, in what is a joint effort between the Purdue Research Foundation and the ALI. The press release notes that if the team manages to confirm the identity of the aircraft, researchers would carry out a larger excavation to recover the plane's remnants in 2026. But skeptics remain. Ric Gillespie of TIGHAR, who has led numerous searches on the island and does see it as her likely landing spot, contends the object isn't a plane but a coconut palm tree and its root ball.