Researchers are set to head to a remote island in the Pacific Ocean in the hope of discovering and investigating what they believe could be the wreckage of American aviator Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10E Electra. Earhart vanished while attempting to become the first female pilot to fly around the world in what became one of the most compelling mysteries of the 20th century. In 2020, an object was discovered in an Apple Maps image.
It has been speculated that it captures a submerged object that could be the wreckage. Now, a 17-person crew is set to head to the potential crash site on Nikumaroro in the island nation of Kiribati. Leading the expedition is Dr.
Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute. There’s an object visible in the Nikumaroro lagoon. Everything that we see indicates it’s very possible, perhaps even likely, that this is what remains of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.” Earhart was an American aviator and aviation pioneer.
She became one of the first female passengers to cross the Atlantic by plane in 1928, and in 1932 she became the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight. In 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean as she attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. When she disappeared, Earhart worked at Purdue University as a women’s career counselor and an adviser to Purdue’s Aeronautics Department.
The Taraia Object Expedition is being funded by Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute. President Donald Trump in 2025 ordered the FBI to “declassify and release all government records” related to Earhart and her final flight. The Taraia Object is the name given to an unusual shape visible in satellite imagery of the lagoon at Nikumaroro, a remote island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati.
Researchers believe that it could be the submerged remains of Earhart’s plane. The object first attracted attention in 2020, when researcher Michael Ashmore spotted it while examining Apple Maps imagery. When researchers looked back through older satellite images, they found that the shape was already visible in imagery captured in 2015, years before it was brought to their attention.
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