NIKUMARORO, Kiribati — A new expedition searching for Amelia Earhart’s lost plane has come up empty: researchers said the plane-shaped object spotted in satellite images of a remote Pacific lagoon was likely a collection of large trees, not wreckage, according to CNN.
The 17-member expedition, a joint effort led by the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) and Purdue University, arrived on Nikumaroro Island on October 12 to examine the “Taraia Object,” a visual anomaly first detected in satellite imagery in 2020 in the atoll’s lagoon, Purdue University said in a news release. The team spent seven days near the island, including four onshore. By the time they arrived, a good portion of the object had broken up and washed away, leaving a Y-shaped segment that was a fraction of its size in the images, and a reflective surface on the remaining fragment turned out to be a naturally occurring carbonate coating rather than metal, according to Purdue.
“We have always said this was a scientific endeavor. We followed scientific methods to test the hypothesis, and we’ve ruled out one hypothesis,” said Steve Schultz, Purdue’s general counsel and an expedition member, in a video released by the university. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that smoking gun.” ALI’s executive director Rick Pettigrew said the team “accomplished our goal to determine what the Taraia Object was,” and added that the evidence for the wider castaway hypothesis “remained very, very strong” — his assessment that Earhart and her navigator likely ended up on Nikumaroro remains the expedition’s position, not a proven finding.
Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific on July 2, 1937, near the end of an attempted flight around the world, while trying to reach Howland Island. Her Lockheed Electra 10-E, known as the “Flying Laboratory,” was funded by the Purdue Research Foundation and was to be returned to the university when she completed the trip. No confirmed wreckage has ever been recovered, and the disappearance remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in aviation.
The Nikumaroro theory holds that Earhart and Noonan landed on the atoll’s reef after failing to find Howland Island and survived for a time as castaways. Previous investigations have examined historical radio transmissions and objects found on the island. This expedition also found several artifacts, including a steel tube about 30 inches long in the lagoon near the Taraia Peninsula, which will undergo further analysis, according to USA Today’s reporting of the findings; researchers said such finds help them understand how debris moves through the lagoon.
Why it matters: ruling out the most visually compelling satellite lead in years narrows the search and shows how satellite anomalies can mislead — tree debris deposited on a sandspit mimicked the outline that raised hopes of a breakthrough nearly 90 years after the flight.
What happens next: Purdue said the search will continue, and the artifacts recovered will be analysed. For now, the Taraia Object joins a long list of ruled-out leads, and the mystery of Earhart and Noonan’s final flight endures. Read the CNN report here.
