A pioneering aviator has disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the world. Could an unusual object in a satellite image finally unravel the mystery?
Published on October 7, 2026
Amelia Earhart disappeared decades ago on July 2, 1937, during a daring attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, but researchers are still searching for answers. His Lockheed 10E Electra plane had already flown 22,000 miles (35,405 kilometers) when it was last seen taking off from Lae, New Guinea, for what was expected to be a grueling 18-hour journey to Howland Island, a small piece of land in the Pacific Ocean. He had 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers) left to go before reaching his goal.
There are conflicting theories about what happened to Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, and despite dozens of searches, the location of her lost plane remains unknown. An expedition led by Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., launched this week, marks the latest attempt to solve what may be the world’s greatest aviation mystery.
A timeline of Earhart’s final flight contains clues to her final moments:
This is where opinions on the ultimate fates of Earhart and Noonan diverge – although few would dispute that the odds were against them.
At 2,556 miles (4,113 kilometers) long, this leg of his journey – 31 of 34 in total – was always going to be the most daunting. This leg involved more time in the air than Earhart’s solo Atlantic crossing five years earlier and required him to locate and land on the small Pacific island of Howland, which is only 2 miles long and less than 2 miles wide. His Electra aircraft was loaded with a maximum of 1,150 gallons of fuel, with additional tanks satisfied by removing the passenger seats.
“They flew all night and then tried to spot this little island. We know there were clouds in the area and the sun is in her face while she’s talking. It’s really, really difficult,” said Dorothy Cochrane, an Earhart expert and retired curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
The disaster and presumed death of the 39-year-old airman made headlines and captured the public imagination.
The United States mounted an unprecedented attempt to find the crew and plane. The efforts covered an area the size of Texas, according to the Smithsonian, but got nowhere.
Divergent theories
For decades, historians have debated how and where Earhart disappeared. Some of the most controversial theories seem implausible: A 2017 documentary claimed she was taken prisoner by the Japanese and executed.
The leading school of thought – and the official decision made following massive research by the US government – suggests that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and their Electra crashed in the Pacific Ocean near their intended destination.
Others believe that Earhart and Noonan landed their plane 400 miles (644 kilometers) south of Howland – on or near Nikumaroro Island, then known as Gardner Island – and became, at least for a time, castaways.
There, proponents suggest, the duo made repeated distress calls for help using the plane’s radio, but then died of thirst or starvation, their bodies possibly eaten by the coral-fringed island’s enormous coconut crabs.
Planes flew over the uninhabited island during the initial searches following Earhart’s disappearance, but “no one was seen,” according to the U.S. Coast Guard report. Several expeditions have since traveled to Nikumaroro to explore the castaway hypothesis, which draws on the work of Ric Gillespie, author of the 2024 book “One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy” and co-founder of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR.
He visited Nikumaroro a dozen times and discovered artifacts that he believed might have belonged to Earhart. Such potential evidence includes a jar of freckle ointment and a sextant, a navigation tool like the one used by Earhart’s co-pilot. Gillespie also points to human bones found on Nikumaroro Island in 1940 and which subsequently disappeared. An analysis of the recorded proportions of the remains seems to suggest a match to a woman of Earhart’s build.
Artifacts found on Nikumaroro that TIGHAR believes may be linked to Earhart. (Top left) A pot similar in style to Dr. CH Berry’s Freckle Ointment. Earhart was known to worry about her freckles; fragments of red material chemically compatible with an early 20th century cosmetic; a broken knife, similar to a knife listed in the Electra’s inventory; a broken glass bottle. The bottle design was patented on May 30, 1933, according to TIGHAR’s research. (TIGHAR.org)
A Purdue University team led by archaeologist Rick Pettigrew is the latest to head to Nikumaroro, now part of the Republic of Kiribati, in hopes of discovering Earhart’s plane. Researchers plan to study a fuzzy object first spotted in satellite images in 2020, known as the Taraia object, which they believe could be wreckage from the plane. “We have a single goal, which is to examine the object and make that identification. That’s a critical piece of information that everything else depends on,” said Pettigrew, founder and executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute in Eugene, Oregon.
Gillespie, who said he has been to the location in question on visits prior to 2020, believes the Taraia object is a partially submerged tree. In his account, the plane was destroyed long ago, crushed by the power of the ocean waves against the coral reef.
“He won’t find anything,” Gillespie said. “I talked with Rick about this. We’ve known each other for many years. We just agreed to disagree.”
The Taraia object, first spotted in 2020, is visible in recent satellite images. (Archaeological Heritage Institute)
But regardless of whether the Taraia object was another dead end, the idea that Earhart ended up becoming an island castaway is far from widely accepted, Cochrane said. Most likely, the plane crashed and fell to the bottom of the ocean, not far from its intended destination.
“You have to follow the facts and the facts are that she says she gets to Howland Island after all this time and she’s starting to run out of fuel,” Cochrane added. “Then an hour later the fuel gets lower and lower and at the end they can feel the fear in his voice.”
However, repeated efforts to locate Earhart’s plane near Howland were unsuccessful.
Research conducted in 2024 by ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision raised hopes when sonar images appeared to reveal something that looked like a submerged plane. The effort ultimately uncovered rocks shaped like airplanes.
Before
After
The plane shape revealed by Deep Sea Vision sonar images in January 2024 turned out to be a rock formation when a team revisited the site in November of that year. (Deep Sea Vision, an Eco Minerals company)
Deep-sea exploration company Nauticos has completed three expeditions since 2002, which, along with the terrain covered by a 2009 expedition led by the Waitt Institute for Discovery, have covered a total of 3,610 square miles (9,350 square kilometers), an area roughly the size of Connecticut. In the summer of 2026, Nauticos researchers were still trying to raise the $8 million to $10 million needed to embark on what they hope will be a final expedition to explore a research area narrowed by new information from experiments using a replica of Earhart’s radio system.
A high-stakes business
Earhart was no stranger to high-stakes projects. She set numerous aeronautical records. Her most impressive, according to Cochrane, was making the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman in May 1932. She was the second human to do so, just five years after aviator Charles Lindbergh pioneered the feat.
That Earhart trip included a life-changing moment that she recounted with casual aplomb in a speech she gave in London shortly after her arrival. Just this year, archivists at the U.S. Library of Congress digitized long-lost audio of the speech discovered in their collection.
“Something happened that had never happened before in my 12 years of flying, which was the altimeter, the instrument needed to record altitude – the height above the ground – failed,” Earhart said of his 15-hour flight across the Atlantic. “The needle was spinning around the dial in such a way that I knew it was out of commission for the rest of the night.” An excerpt of the speech was preserved on a small 78 rpm disc and included as a promotional giveaway in the cover of his memoir “The Fun of It”, published later that year.
Cochrane believes that Earhart was an accomplished aviator who forged her own path at a time when aviation had no place for women. It’s easy to forget today that women didn’t start piloting commercial flights until the 1970s.
Earhart’s radio communications skills failed him that fateful day in 1937, Cochrane said. She had originally planned to have radio operator Harry Manning on the trip, but he dropped out after a delay following the first leg of the trip. Additionally, neither Earhart nor Noonan knew Morse code, which could have made it easier to establish two-way communication with the Itasca, Cochrane added.
“Those were the two big points of failure, because you know she did a pretty good job of getting through the rest of the world. She was doing her landings and takeoffs, and they were getting where they needed to go,” Cochrane said.
“She’s a pioneering woman in aviation. She did things no woman has ever done, and she also made mistakes. She wasn’t perfect.”
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