A United States team backed by Purdue University, the Indiana institution that part-funded Amelia Earhart’s final aircraft, is due to reach Nikumaroro this week — an uninhabited atoll in the Phoenix Islands group of Kiribati. The group wants to inspect a submerged object in the atoll’s lagoon that some researchers believe is the Lockheed Electra 10-E in which Earhart vanished in 1937, and Purdue general counsel and expedition member Steve Schultz told Reuters he was in Fiji last week doing advance work for the mission.
Key facts
- The mission is led by Richard Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI), a research body in Eugene, Oregon, working with Purdue, according to RNZ.
- It is called the Taraia Object Expedition and departed on 7 October, the New York Post reports.
- Sources differ on numbers: Schultz put the team at 17 people and the cost at US$900,000 (NZ$1.6m), per RNZ, while TODAY reported a 16-person team of archaeologists, logistics experts, scuba and safety personnel, filmmakers and Kiribati representatives.
- The party is travelling aboard the Marin Mainiku, a Kiribati National Shipping Line vessel, on an 830-mile run from Tarawa that takes six days, according to the BBC.
- Arrival estimates also differ: the BBC said Monday, while RNZ said Tuesday, 13 October, local time. RNZ reported the group embarked from Los Angeles earlier this month; the BBC and TODAY describe the voyage as starting from the Kiribati capital.
- RNZ reports the team plans five days on Nikumaroro before the six-day return trip to Tarawa.
Why it matters
The search is unfolding inside Fiji’s immediate neighbourhood, and the sources place Fiji on the mission’s logistics chain through Schultz’s advance work. Everything beyond inspection rests with Kiribati: the New York Post reports the cabinet approved the mission after a year of waiting, and Schultz told Reuters that removing any wreckage would need further permission from the Kiribati government.
Fiji has been the staging point for other regional activity in recent weeks, including the Pacific pre-COP31 leaders’ meeting in Nadi, alongside Nadi’s standing as a regional weather centre and Fiji Airways moving its Tuvalu service to Nadi in December.
The Taraia Object
The target is an anomaly in a lagoon on Nikumaroro that TODAY says was first spotted in satellite imagery in 2020. Purdue says the object has since been confirmed as visible in aerial photography of the area dating back to 1938, the BBC reports. RNZ says the multi-branched shape resembles an aircraft fuselage and wings to Pettigrew’s team.
TODAY reports that in archival satellite images the shape first appears in 2015, a year after a large tropical storm shifted the sands. The New York Post adds that pilot Justin Myers said he identified a possible image of the missing Electra in Google Earth imagery of the atoll.
A rival explorer says it is a tree
The mission’s loudest critic is Ric Gillespie, co-founder of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) and author of the 2024 book “One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy.” RNZ reports he has led a dozen expeditions to the atoll over three decades and is the leading proponent of the theory that Earhart died there as a castaway — yet he expects the new team to find nothing.
Gillespie told Reuters the object is a fallen pandanus tree, a palm-like evergreen native to the island region, that washed into the lagoon, and that the root ball and branches are visible. He had earlier told TODAY, in 2025, that the satellite image showed a downed coconut tree. “I’d love to find that airplane. It ain’t gonna happen,” he said, in remarks carried by RNZ and the BBC. He also told the BBC he suspects the aircraft broke apart and its fragments were carried into the depths of the Pacific. The Purdue team credits him with laying the foundation of the theory it hopes to prove.
What happened in 1937
Earhart, then 39, took off on 2 July 1937 from Lae in what is now Papua New Guinea, bound for Howland Island to refuel, during an attempt to become the first woman to pilot a plane around the world with navigator Fred Noonan, according to the BBC and TODAY. RNZ reports definitive radio contact was lost the next day after she reported that gas was running low and gave her line of position.
The disappearance triggered the largest US government search ever mounted for a lost aircraft, including a flyover of what was then Gardner Island, RNZ reports, with no trace found. The official US view remains that the Electra ran out of fuel and crashed at sea near Howland, about 400 miles north-west of Nikumaroro. The BBC notes that while that account is largely accepted, no physical evidence has ever been recovered.
The Purdue connection
RNZ reports Earhart was effectively a visiting faculty member at Purdue for two years as a women’s career counsellor and adviser to its aeronautics department, and that a Purdue research grant paid for the Electra, which she called her “flying laboratory.” TODAY says she held that role in 1935 and had planned to return the aircraft to the West Lafayette campus.
Reaching the lagoon will not be simple. The BBC reports the team must navigate a narrow gap cut into the atoll’s reef by the British in 1963 — the last time Nikumaroro was inhabited.
Frequently Asked Questions
What evidence makes researchers think Earhart ended up on Nikumaroro?
According to RNZ, which carried the Reuters report, the team cites artifacts recovered on the atoll by Ric Gillespie, including a 1930s-era glass cosmetic jar for freckle cream and remnants of a jackknife like one Earhart carried. TODAY reports Purdue also points to radio bearings taken from distress transmissions, a medicine vial and compact case, and a 2018 analysis by University of Tennessee anthropology professor Richard Jantz, who said skeletal remains found on the island in 1940 were Earhart’s. TODAY notes an expert at the time of their discovery concluded the bones belonged to a middle-aged man, and that the remains have since disappeared.
Why did the expedition start a year later than planned?
The New York Post reports the mission was announced last year but was delayed while organisers waited for approval from the government of Kiribati, which its cabinet has since granted. TODAY reports the expedition was first announced in October 2025 and postponed for a year while approvals and permits were obtained.
Have earlier searches for the Lockheed Electra found anything?
No. RNZ reports two previous attempts to locate wreckage in the surrounding ocean failed, including a 2019 operation by marine archaeologist Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic, and that a plane-shaped sonar image from the sea floor turned out to be a pile of rocks. The BBC reports a 2024 claim of a find about 4,877m down near Howland Island was later confirmed to be a rock formation.
If the plane is found, can the team take any of it away?
Not on this trip. Purdue lawyer Steve Schultz told Reuters, in the report carried by RNZ, that no artifacts would be removed and that extracting the wreckage would require further permission from the Kiribati government. Purdue spokesperson Trevor Peters told Fox News Digital, as reported by the New York Post, that a full-scale archaeological excavation is hoped for next year with the proper permissions, and that the institute and the Purdue Research Foundation share a dream of returning the plane to Purdue for display.
