An expedition is going next month to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati to look for the plane of missing aviator Amelia Earhart.
Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, as she tried to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air.
The expedition team is leaving the Marshall Islands on Nov. 4 and traveling to Nikumaroro Island in Kiribati, according to a release from Purdue University, which has three representatives on the team.
The researchers will investigate the Taraia Object, first spotted on satellite imaging in 2020. The researchers believe the object, in a lagoon, is Earhart’s long-lost Lockheed Model 10-E Electra plane.
The team will use imaging and remote sensing via magnetometers and sonar before dredging up the Taraia Object so it can be properly identified, Purdue University said.
“Finding Amelia Earhart’s Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime. … Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof,” Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute that is also participating in the expedition, said in the release.
Some previous researchers aren’t convinced the Taraia Object is Earhart’s aircraft. Richard Gillespie of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which says it collected evidence that it hoped would show she landed at Nikumaroro, told NBC News in July that “we’ve looked there in that spot, and there’s nothing there.”
Mr. Gillespie said he believes the Taraia Object is a felled palm tree with a root ball still attached.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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