A team from Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute is heading to Nikumaroro to examine an underwater anomaly. Its possible connection to Amelia Earhart’s aircraft remains unconfirmed.
Researchers from Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute have set out for Nikumaroro Atoll in Kiribati to study an object in a lagoon that may be Amelia Earhart’s aircraft. The expedition members say the object’s origin has yet to be established.
Purdue University says the expedition officially began on October 2, when its first members left from the university airport to join the rest of the team. All 17 members were due to meet in Tarawa on October 6 and planned to travel by sea to Nikumaroro on October 7. RIA Novosti, citing CBS News, reports that the researchers intend to film the lagoon and object, then survey the area with magnetometers and sonar. They hope to raise the find from the seabed afterward to determine what it is.
The target is a visual anomaly in a lagoon on a Pacific island. Nikumaroro is part of Kiribati and lies about 640 kilometres southeast of Howland Island, where Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were headed during their attempted round-the-world flight.
Earhart disappeared with Noonan in 1937. Five years earlier, she had become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. The object has not yet been confirmed as a discovery, or identified as Earhart’s aircraft.