Expedition on Nikumaroro

A team of 17 researchers and technicians, coordinated by the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University, reached the Kiribati island of Nikumaroro on 12 October. They covered the last stretch by sea in a five-day voyage from the Kiribati capital. Rough seas and strong winds kept the crew on their ship for several days, which delayed the work on land. Once ashore, they spent four days investigating a lagoon on the Taraia Peninsula, where the object was first seen on satellite imagery in 2020.

To test whether the object was an aircraft, the team used a magnetometer to detect iron and sonar to locate objects buried under the lagoon sediment. The stated aim was to check the aircraft hypothesis on the ground.

What the team found

Purdue said the Taraia Object most likely consisted of many big trees that had come to rest on the sandspit of the peninsula. By the time the researchers arrived, much of the debris had broken up and washed away, leaving a single Y-shaped segment. The metallic shine visible in photographs came from a hardened layer of coral sand that had settled on the wood. Purdue said the object appears in photography dating back to 1938. Project director Rick Pettigrew, speaking near the site, reflected on the long search.

“This mystery has been ongoing for 90 years and the mystery continues.”

The 1937 disappearance

Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished in 1937 on the third-to-last leg of an attempt to fly around the world. Earhart had already flown her twin-engine Lockheed Electra from California across South America, Africa and Asia before reaching Lae in Papua New Guinea. Their plane disappeared while heading for Howland Island, a remote uninhabited coral island about 400 miles (644km) from Nikumaroro, where they planned to refuel. The official explanation is that the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific. One theory holds that Earhart unintentionally navigated to Nikumaroro, ditched there and died as a castaway.

Evidence still in dispute

Despite the negative result, project director Rick Pettigrew still considers it very likely that Earhart and Noonan reached Nikumaroro. Dorothy Cochrane, a former curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, said the island had been searched more than 15 times without authenticated evidence that the plane or the two fliers were there. Pettigrew also pointed to a 2018 analysis of bones found on the island in 1940, which suggested they could have belonged to a woman of Earhart's build, as well as a woman's shoe and 1930s make-up items found there. He expects the question to be settled eventually.

“I think eventually someone will find conclusive evidence here.”

What comes next

Pettigrew said the team had met its goal of establishing what the object was. Purdue has said it will continue the search for the aircraft. The expedition's findings leave the central question of Earhart's fate unanswered after 89 years.