In just one month, one of the greatest mysteries of modern times could finally be solved – the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
Scientists are preparing for an ambitious expedition to Nikumaroro, a five-mile-long island in the Western Pacific Ocean.
There, they will investigate the Taraia Object, a "visual anomaly" in a lagoon that is believed to be Earhart's missing Lockheed Electra 10E.
Amelia Earhart was flying this plane with navigator Fred Noonan when she disappeared near Howland Island on July 2, 1937.
At the time, she was attempting to become the first woman to complete a flight around the globe.
What went wrong and where her plane crashed has remained a mystery ever since – but experts think they are close to solving it.
Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI), is part of the expedition team that will travel to Nikumaroro Island.
“Finding Amelia Earhart's Electra plane would be the discovery of a lifetime,” he said.
Pettigrew said there is an "extremely compelling and multifaceted case" that Earhart and Noonan's final destination was Nikumaroro Island.
"Confirmation of the plane wreckage there would be indisputable evidence," he added.
The three-week expedition will depart from Purdue University Airport in West Lafayette, Indiana, on October 30 for Majuro in the Marshall Islands.
A crew of 15 people will depart Majuro by boat on November 4, cover about 1,200 nautical miles to Nikumaroro and then stay for several days on the small island.
The work at Nikumaroro will focus on inspecting the Taraia Object, which was first spotted in satellite imagery in 2020 and looks like the fuselage and tail of an airplane.
Promisingly, the Taraia Object was later confirmed to be visible in aerial photographs of the island's lagoon from 1938, a year after the tragedy.
Initial work will include video and static images of the site, followed by magnetic sensors and sonar.
Only after that will the team use underwater excavation with hydraulic rams to expose the object and identify it, Purdue University said.
Additional fieldwork will include walking on nearby land surfaces to search for debris brought by the waves.
The expedition is expected to return to the port of Majuro around November 21 and fly home the next day - when the mystery could finally be solved.
The next important step would be to return the remaining parts of the Lockheed Electra 10E to the US.
Amelia Earhart's original plan was to return the plane to West Lafayette after the historic flight to Howland Island.
“Additional work would be needed to achieve this goal,” said Steve Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel at Purdue University.
“But we feel we owe it to her legacy, which remains very strong at Purdue, to try to bring it home.”
Earhart, already an aviation legend by the 1930s, came to Purdue in 1935 and worked for two years as a career counselor for women and an advisor in the aeronautics department.
The newly opened Amelia Earhart Terminal at Purdue Airport honors her life and work, which was tragically cut short at the age of 39.
What is Taraia Object?
The Taraia object is a visual anomaly in the lagoon of Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific.
It is so called because of its location near Gjerdeze Taraia on the northern side of the lagoon.
Scientists searching for Amelia Earhart's missing plane will set off to investigate the Taraia Object.
Promisingly, the object is similar in size and shape to the fuselage and tail of an airplane.
Although the aviator's intended destination 88 years ago was Howland Island, Nikumaroro Island, about 350 miles to the southeast, has emerged as an equally plausible location for the wreckage.
Experts recently discovered a coded aluminum panel that was found washed up on Nikumaroro in 1991, thought to be part of Earhart's missing plane.
Analysis showed that the panel did not belong to Earhart's Lockheed Electra, but to a plane that crashed during World War II, at least six years later.
However, another team of scientists recently claimed to have found the location of the wreckage near Howland Island using a restored radio from 1937.
What happened to Amelia Earhart?
Amelia Earhart – who gained fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic – was on one of the final stages of a flight around the globe in 1937 when her plane tragically crashed.
This fatal flight took off from Lae Airfield in Papua Guinea and headed east towards Howland Island, a 2,556-mile journey.
Along with navigator Fred Noonan, 44, she was communicating with a US Coast Guard ship, the USCGC Itasca, before the plane lost contact.
In her last radio message, Earhart said:
“We are on line 157 337… we are walking on the north-south line.”
The numbers 157 and 337 referred to compass directions – 157° and 337° – and described a line that passed near the intended destination, Howland Island.
A popular theory says that the plane crashed into the sea due to lack of fuel and then sank.
Both Earhart and Noonan either died immediately after impact, or were unable to escape and drowned.
This tragic loss has prompted more fantastical theories, including that they were eaten by crabs or imprisoned by the Japanese.
Ultimately, the wreckage is believed to be beneath the waves near the planned destination, Howland Island, or on another island 350 miles southeast, Nikumaroro. /GazetaExpress/
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