The expedition began with a blurry satellite image on Apple Maps. Just off Nikumaroro, a remote atoll in the South Pacific, a mysterious object lurked below the surface. Didn’t it look suspiciously like the wing of an airplane?
The atoll in question is located near the region where aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in 1937. The location of their Lockheed Electra has been a longstanding mystery, but that hasn’t stopped new generations of sleuths from trying to solve it. The strange shape near Nikumaroro sparked the latest attempt to crack the case.
Earlier this month, a team of 17 traveled to the South Pacific to investigate the so-called Taraia Object, named for the atoll’s Taraia Peninsula. They surveyed the site with a magnetometer (to detect ferrous metals) and side-scan sonar (to identify objects buried in the sediment). As they worked, onlookers eagerly anticipated success, with some headlines claiming that the 89-year-old mystery “could be solved in days.” On October 18, the researchers announced the results: They had found “no conclusive evidence” of Earhart’s plane on Nikumaroro.
That tantalizing shape in the satellite imagery had likely been “a collection of large trees.” Many of the trees and other debris had already washed away by the time the team arrived at the site. And unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that smoking gun.” When her plane disappeared, Earhart was trying to become the first woman in history to fly around the world. She’d already broken a number of other records, becoming the first woman (and second person) to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic in 1932 and the first person to fly solo and nonstop from Hawaii to the United States mainland in 1935.
Two years later, she plotted out a round-the-world journey divided into 34 legs. She selected a route near the equator to avoid harsh northern weather. In exchange, however, she would need to navigate long stretches of open water in the South Pacific.
Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937. Their plan was to land on Howland Island, an isolated speck of earth thousands of miles from the mainland, where a Coast Guard cutter waited with fuel. Been unable to reach you by radio.
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