A Mysterious Anomaly May Be Amelia Earhart's Plane. This Team Is Racing to Prove It.
Purdue University announced a plan to locate Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft.
Dubbed the Taraia Object Expedition, the effort will include a field team visiting the Pacific island Nikumaroro in November 2025.
The goal is to 'close the case' on Amelia Earhart's disappearance on July 2, 1937.
This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.
Exactly 88 years after Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific Ocean, Purdue University—which helped fund her historic attempt to fly around the world—has announced it will lead a new effort to solve aviation's greatest mystery. The university has detailed plans to search a remote island where many believe Earhart's plane may have crashed on July 2, 1937.
In November 2025, a field team from the Purdue Research Foundation and Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALL) will head to the island of Nikumaroro to confirm whether the long-debated Taraia Object, an anomaly at the site halfway between Australia and Hawaii, really is the Lockheed Electra 10E plane once piloted by Earhart.
'With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof,' Richard Pettigrew, ALI's executive director, said in a statement. 'I look forward to collaborating with Purdue Research Foundation in writing the final chapter in Amelia Earhart's remarkable life story.'
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This latest effort joins a long list of attempts to finally solve the Earhart mystery. According to Pettigrew, the Taraia Object hypothesis draws on a mix of documentary records, photographs, satellite imagery, physical evidence, and eyewitness accounts.
Several key pieces of evidence are driving the latest push. These include:
Radio bearings recorded form radio transmissions at the time by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, and Pan American World Airways, which converge on Nikumaroro
A 2017 analysis of human bones discovered on the island in 1940, which determined Earhart's bone lengths were more similar to the discovered bones than 99 percent of individuals
Artifacts of a women's shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar, and a medicine vial, all dating to the 1930s
A photographic anomaly—called the Bevington Object—captured three months after the plane's disappearance that resembles Electra landing gear on the Nikumaroro reef
And the Taraia Object itself, located in 2020, which has been in the same place in the lagoon since 1938.
The theory suggests that Earhart didn't crash into the ocean, but instead landed on the uninhabited island—where she was stranded and eventually died.
The new expedition plans to leave the Marshall Islands on November 5 and spend five days on Nikumaroro inspecting the Taraia Object. If successful, the team expects to later excavate Earhart's lost plane.
Edward Elliott, who was Purdue's president from 1922 to 1945, brought Amelia Earhart to campus as a career counselor for women, and had her live in the women's residence hall for part of each semester. During her time at Purdue, Earhart also advised the aeronautical engineering department and used the university's new airport, which was the only one of its kind at a U.S. college or university at the time.
'About nine decades ago Amelia Earhart was recruited to Purdue, and the university president later worked with her to prepare an aircraft for her historic flight around the world,' Mung Chiang, Purdue's current president, said in a statement. 'Today, as a team of experts try again to locate the plane, the Boilermaker spirit of exploration lives on.'
Purdue played a pivotal role in helping Earhart attempt to circumnavigate the globe with navigator Fred Noonan. The university helped fund her Lockheed Electra 10E through the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research, with Purdue trustee David Ross leading the effort alongside major contributors like J.K. Lilly, Vincent Bendix, Western Electric, and the Goodrich and Goodyear companies.
As a thank you for the support, Earhart planned to donate the plane to Purdue upon her return, hoping it would help further scientific research in aeronautics.
Earhart's connection to Purdue has continued long after her disappearance. Most recently, in 2024, construction began on the roughly 10,000-square-foot Amelia Earhart Terminal at Purdue University Airport.
'Both Earhart and her husband and manager, George Putnam, expressed their intention to return the Electra to Purdue after her historic flight,' Steven Schulz, senior vice president and general counsel of Purdue University, said in a statement. 'Based on the evidence, we agree with ALI that this expedition offers the best chance not only to solve perhaps the greatest mystery of the 20th century, but also to fulfill Amelia's wishes and bring the Electra home.'
Finding Earhart's plane won't be easy, especially since others have searched the site many times before. Ric Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has traveled for a dozen on-site searches for over three decades.
While he agrees Nikumaroro is likely where Earhart landed before passing, he told NBC that he's come up empty plenty of times before. 'We've looked there in that spot, and there's nothing there,' he said about the Purdue effort. 'I understand the desire to find a piece of Amelia Earhart's airplane. God knows we've tried. But the data, the facts, do not support the hypothesis. It's as simple as that.'
Pettigrew, who has worked on searching for Earhart's plane for years, said objects continually shift in and out of sand coverage. Gillespie said a plane wouldn't get covered by sand, but would have gotten buried with coral.
As Biography.com highlights, the mysterious final flight of Amelia Earhart captured the world's imagination in 1937, just as it continues to today. Earhart and Noonan were six weeks and 20,000 miles into their global journey when they failed to make their scheduled landing at Howland Island, located approximately 1,700 miles southwest of Honolulu.
The 2.5-square-mile island proved difficult for Earhart's plane to find amidst the vast ocean. There's no concrete evidence that points to why the plane never made it to the island, or where it went instead.
The absence of definitive proof has given rise to a multitude of theories about the fate of Earhart, Noonan, and their plane.
The most widely accepted theory suggests that Earhart and Noonan simply crashed into the ocean and sank after running out of fuel. Another credible theory posits that the duo landed on the in-question coral reef around Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro Island, located 350 nautical miles southeast of Howland.
Earhart, a Kansas native, began her ascent to fame in 1922 when she piloted her bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane, 'The Canary,' to a then-record height of 14,000 feet for female aviators. By 1923, Earhart had earned her pilot's license, becoming the 16th woman to do so from the Federation Aeronautique. While financial struggles forced her out of flying, she returned to aviation in 1927.
Then residing in Massachusetts, Earhart jumped at the opportunity to be the first woman to partake in a transatlantic flight. Although just a passenger on the 1928 adventure led by pilot Wilmer 'Bill' Stultz, her subsequent book chronicling the experience catapulted her into the spotlight.
Following her initial fame, Earhart embarked on her own pioneering flights. In 1932, she made history as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, navigating a nearly 15-hour journey from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland.
She continued to add a series of impressive flights to her global résumé, all culminating in what was to be her most monumental flight of all: an ambitious bid to be the first person, period, to circumnavigate the globe along the equator.
Now, almost 100 years after Earhart first took to the skies, the search to solve the mystery of her final flight on July 2, 1937, isn't just about locating a lost aircraft. It's about honoring a legacy that shaped modern aviation.
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'About nine decades ago, Amelia Earhart was recruited to Purdue, and the university president later worked with her to prepare an aircraft for her historic flight around the world,' Purdue President Mung Chiang said in the release. 'Today, as a team of experts try again to locate the plane, the Boilermaker spirit of exploration lives on.' Steven Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel of Purdue University, said that in recognition of the foundation's contribution, Earhart and her husband, George Putnam, intended to give the plane to Purdue upon her return, where it would be used to further scientific research in aeronautics. 'Both Earhart and her husband and manager, George Putnam, expressed their intention to return the Electra to Purdue after her historic flight,' Schultz said. 'Based on the evidence, we agree with ALI that this expedition offers the best chance not only to solve perhaps the greatest mystery of the 20th century, but also to fulfill Amelia's wishes and bring the Electra home.' The price tag of the November expedition is estimated at $900K, Schultz said. Of the total, $400K has been raised so far through efforts by ALI, Schultz said, with the remaining $500K being provided by PRF through a line of credit. No Purdue faculty are scheduled to be included on the expedition, Schultz said, but Purdue alumnus Marc Hagle, who became the first married couple alongside his wife, Sharon, in 2022 to embark on a commercial space flight with Blue Origin, has been designated as a special emissary to the exploration. The Electra, which disappeared on July 2, 1937, has never been recovered, but a vast amount of circumstantial evidence has been amassed, the release said, largely by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGER) over nearly 40 years, supporting the Nikumaroro hypothesis. This idea posits that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash at sea but instead landed and were marooned on an uninhabited island and subsequently perished there. The hypothesis, as updated by ALI with new evidence for the Taraia Object, is based on documentary records, photographs and satellite images, physical evidence, and personal testimony, the release said, including these highlights: Radio bearings recorded from radio transmissions at the time by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and Pan American World Airways, which converge on Nikumaroro A 2017 analysis of human bones discovered on the island in 1940, which determined Earhart's bone lengths were more similar to the discovered bones than 99% of individuals, strongly supporting the conclusion they belong to Earhart Artifacts including a woman's shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar and a medicine vial — all dating to the 1930s The Bevington Object, a photographic anomaly captured just three months after the plane's disappearance, which appears to represent one of the Electra landing gear on the Nikumaroro reef The Taraia Object, located in 2020, which has been in the same place in the lagoon since 1938 Schultz said in his more than 12 years as general counsel for the university, Purdue and PRF have been contacted "several" times with claims that the plane had been located, but none had been as strong of a case as ALI's. Some of the evidence that strengthens ALI's case, Schultz said, is evidence of directional bearings from Earhart's radio signals captured at the time. Schultz said Earhart's voice was heard on U.S. mainland over radio signals in the days following her disappearance, which could have been possible only had her plane survived. Pettigrew said it is often misunderstood that Earhart's plane "crash landed," but he said that couldn't have been true. "We're talking about a successful landing on the reef with an intact aircraft," Pettigrew said. "I think it's likely that Amelia was planning to be rescued, refueled, take off again and make it to Hawaii and continue on to California to complete her journey. That was her hope. And for a period of maybe five days, that hope remained alive." But in the days that followed Earhart's landing on the remote island, Pettigrew said, the tide would have risen, causing the airplane, which had been completely depleted of fuel, to be lifted off its landing place. "In this concept, the plane would have been rolled and crashed up against the reef as a consequence of the surf and would have broken up," Pettigrew said. "The outer wings would have come off first, then the engine, the landing gear … And remember, it was full of empty gas tanks, so it would be very buoyant." In early 2024, Deep Sea Vision, a marine robotics company in South Carolina, made headlines when it reported that scans of a blurry sonar image could be the missing Electra plane deep in the Pacific Ocean. Schultz said that claim has since been debunked, and that while Deep Sea Vision's thought-to-be location was deep under water, ALI's location is in very shallow water. Ric Gillespie, an author and expedition leader of 12 searches in the South Pacific for Earhart's plane, said in an interview Wednesday morning for the TODAY Show that he is skeptical of the satellite photos of the proposed site. Gillespie said in the interview his team had previously searched the proposed site, but found nothing, noting it could be a "coconut tree complete with root ball." But Schultz said the university and ALI have strong reasons to believe it's not a tree stuck in the water. With the evidence produced, Schultz said, if Purdue and ALI don't pursue the possibility of finding the long lost Electra plane, then who will? "Purdue is known for calculated risks, and this is a calculated risk," Schultz said. "We feel like we owe it to the legacy to take it." ALI plans to post project updates, beginning soon, on its subscription video platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, the release said. If the initial expedition proves successful in confirming the identity of the aircraft, PRF and ALI plan to return for larger excavation efforts in 2026 to uncover and help return what remains of Earhart's plane. Schultz said at this time, no money has been set aside for if the plane is found and returned to the university. If the plane is found through this expedition, Schultz said, Purdue has the strongest equitable claim to the remains of the Electra. "That's based on the clear intent, the donated intent, of Amelia and her husband to bring the plane back to Purdue, and the fact that we facilitated it," Schultz said. "Obviously there are a lot of stakeholders now involved in this, not the least of which is Rick and Ali, but also the people of the Republic of Kiribati, and their views on this matter is very important." Jillian Ellison is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. She can be reached via email at jellison@ This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue Research Foundation says it plans to locate Amelia Earhart's plane
