Mystery of Amelia Earhart’s missing plane could be solved in days, researchers say

A group of US researchers believe it may be days before what remains of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart’s missing plane is found off the coast of a remote South Pacific island.

An expedition team Led by Steve Schultz of Purdue University and Richard Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute began the painstaking search Wednesday for what may be Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E aircraft.

“We’re looking at the land, we’re looking for artifacts that might be related to Amelia Earhart,” Pettigrew told CBS News on Wednesday.

“We are still in the data collection phase,” Schultz added.

Expedition members search a lagoon off the coast of Nikumaroro. They are focused on inspecting what is known as the Taraia Object, a visual anomaly visible in aerial photos dating back to 1938 but first noticed on satellite imagery in 2020. These satellite images this is what inspired the new expedition.

Stormy weather hampered their efforts Wednesday, but expedition members said they hoped to have a definitive answer on the object in the coming days.

The search area is so remote that it took the 17-member expedition team five days at sea to reach it.

However, the team is confident that they will be able to tell in just a few days whether they found Earhart’s plane.

“Our next step is to completely analyze the data we collected and then begin using a hydraulic dredge to remove sediment from the bottom,” Pettigrew said.

Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, while attempting to become the first person to fly over the equator. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared 22,000 miles into their expedition.

Nikumaroro is part of the Kiribati archipelago, located halfway between Australia and Hawaii. It’s about 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, which researchers believe was the final destination of Earhart and Noonan’s journey around the equator.

Their disappearance has become one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

“We’re the only ones who came up with a plan to do something like this,” Pettigrew said. “So it’s entirely new.”