Purdue-backed expedition to examine possible Earhart plane wreckage at Nikumaroro

A Purdue University-backed expedition is sailing toward Nikumaroro in Kiribati to examine a lagoon object that could be wreckage from Amelia Earhart’s aircraft. No discovery has yet been confirmed.

Reuters reported on October 10 that the mission involves 17 people and a $900,000 budget. Its original timetable envisaged arrival on October 13. Purdue’s October 9 update, however, said the Marin Mainiku was making better time and could reach the atoll around midday on October 12, local time.

The object was noticed in a 2020 satellite image. Expedition members believe its shape resembles the fuselage and wings of a Lockheed Electra 10-E. They also point to earlier aerial photographs of the lagoon dating back to 1938.

Archaeological Legacy Institute leader Richard Pettigrew is directing the search with Purdue. The team hopes to test the hypothesis that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan reached Nikumaroro or its surroundings after disappearing in 1937.

Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR’s co-founder and a proponent of the castaway hypothesis, disputes this particular object’s interpretation. He believes the image shows a fallen pandanus tree. His view is that the aircraft was washed from the coral flat into the ocean and broke apart.

Previous ocean searches have not recovered confirmed wreckage. They included Robert Ballard’s 2019 expedition. Another apparent aircraft shape in sonar imagery was subsequently identified as rocks.

Earhart and Noonan disappeared while flying from Papua New Guinea toward Howland Island, roughly 400 miles northwest of Nikumaroro. Howland was their intended refueling destination, according to Purdue. Gardner, the former name of Nikumaroro, is central to the alternative castaway hypothesis.

Purdue financed development of the Electra, which Earhart called her flying laboratory. University counsel Steve Schultz said any wreckage found would not be removed on this trip. Recovering it would require additional permission from Kiribati’s government.