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5 days ago
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Amelia Earhart disappeared 88 years ago, on July 2, 1937. Purdue thinks it knows where.
(This story has been updated with new information.) WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — On the 88th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's disappearance, the Purdue Research Foundation and the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) announced a joint effort to locate the flight pioneer's long lost aircraft. The official search, named the "Taraia Object Expedition," will begin on Nov. 5, PRF said in a news release Wednesday morning ahead of a press conference, when a field team organized by ALI visits the island Nikumaroro, part of the Phoenix Islands in the island nation of Kiribati, by sea. The expedition, the release said, will determine whether a visual anomaly known as the "Taraia Object," seen in satellite and other imagery in the island's lagoon, is what remains of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E airplane. Standing directly in front of the hangar Earhart once flew out of at the Purdue University Airport, Richard Pettigrew, ALI's executive director, said the expedition could be the "greatest opportunity ever" to finally close the nearly century-old mystery. "With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof," Pettigrew said. "I look forward to collaborating with Purdue Research Foundation in writing the final chapter in Amelia Earhart's remarkable life story.' Earhart became a visiting professor at Purdue in 1935, and she's one of Purdue's most famous former staff members. A New York Times headline from 1936 proclaimed, "MISS EARHART TO GET 'FLYING LABORATORY'; Purdue Announces $50,000 Fund to Provide a Special Plane for Her Researches." On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. '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
Yahoo
5 days ago
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‘Maybe the greatest opportunity ever': Researchers announce new expedition to locate Amelia Earhart's lost plane
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WGN) — Nearly 90 years after Amelia Earhart mysteriously disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, researchers have announced a new expedition to locate the aviation pioneer's lost aircraft. On Wednesday, (PRF) and (ALI) announced 'the Taraia Object Expedition,' a joint effort to locate Earhart's lost aircraft. According to the PRF, the expedition is expected to get underway in November of 2025 and will begin with a visit to the site of the visual anomaly known as the 'Taraia Object,' which researchers believe may possibly be the remains of the Lockheed Model 10E Electra, also known as the the 'flying laboratory,' flown by Earhart and Fred Noonan during their 1937 journey. 'What we have here is maybe the greatest opportunity ever to finally close the case,' ALI executive director Richard Pettigrew said. 'With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof. I look forward to collaborating with Purdue Research Foundation in writing the final chapter in Amelia Earhart's remarkable life story.' Read more: Latest Chicago news and headlines The 'Taraia Object' is the commonly used name for a visual anomaly spotted in the lagoon of Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific Ocean. Researchers first became aware of the Taraia Object in 2020 after it was spotted in an Apple Maps satellite image. After learning about it, researchers began studying satellite images taken between 2009 and 2021 and discovered that the object first became visible in satellite images around April 27, 2015, shortly after Tropical Cyclone Pam passed by the island. According to researchers, a vast amount of circumstantial evidence amassed largely by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery supports the 'Nikumaroro' hypothesis, which posits that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash at sea but instead landed on an uninhabited island where they were marooned. Additional evidence that supports this hypothesis includes radio bearings that were 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; artifacts dating to the 1930s that were found on the island, like a woman's shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar and a medicine vial; 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; the Bevington Object, a photographic anomaly captured shortly after the plane's disappearance, which appears to represent a piece of the plane's landing gear on the Nikumaroro reef. The historic expedition is set to embark from Majuro in the Marshall Islands on Nov. 5. Crews will spend five days on Nikumaroro to inspect the Taraia Object, before returning to port on Nov. 21. If it is successful in confirming the identity of the aircraft, the PRF and ALI will return to Nikumaroro for larger excavation efforts in 2026 to uncover and help return what remains of Earhart's plane. LATEST CASES: Missing people in Chicagoland Purdue's role in the expedition highlights the contributions Earhart made to the university. Earhart had begun working for the university after Purdue President Edward Elliott became concerned that the women enrolled at the university were not completing their educations. He later hired her to serve as a counselor on careers for women, advise Purdue's aeronautical engineering department and allow her to enjoy access to the resources of Purdue's new airport. The PRF later funded Earhart's 'flying laboratory,' Lockheed Electra 10E airplane, through the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research. Upon her return, Earhart had intended to give the plane to Purdue for research, but it never made it home and now researchers are looking for a conclusion to the nearly century-long story. 'Both Earhart and her husband and manager, George Putnam, expressed their intention to return the Electra to Purdue after her historic flight,' senior vice president and general counsel of Purdue University, Steven 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.' ALI's subscription video platform, , will be used to share updates on the project. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
5 days ago
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Researchers launch new search to find Amelia Earhart's plane
Researches hope to find evidence that will put to rest one of modern history's most enduring mysteries: what happened to legendary pilot Amelia Earhart? On Wednesday, researchers at Purdue University announced a new expedition that hopes to find some material evidence of Earhart's airplane. Using satellite imagery, the researchers have identified a spot on the tiny, remote island of Nikumaroro in Kirabati which they believe may be the final resting place of Earhart's plane, according to NBC News. The expedition was announced on July 2, exactly 88 years after Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during their famed attempt to circumnavigate the world in her airplane. Earhart worked for Purdue University, and the institute helped to fund her historic, if tragic, final flight. Purdue said it plans to send a team in November to examine the site and, hopefully, find evidence of her Lockheed Electra 10E airplane. 'We believe we owe it to Amelia and her legacy at Purdue to fulfill her wishes, if possible, to bring the Electra back to Purdue,' Steve Schultz, Purdue's general counsel, said in a statement. The satellite photo fueling the new expedition was captured in 2015, just one year after a powerful tropical cyclone shifted the sands at the island, potentially revealing the plane, according to Richard Pettigrew, the executive director of the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute in Oregon. Pettigrew took the satellite imagery to Purdue, which kickstarted the upcoming expedition. According to Pettigrew, the size and composition of the object matches parts of Earhart's plane, and the island's location is close to Earhart's planned flight path, and almost exactly where four of her last radio calls for help originated. 'It satisfies all the criteria,' he said. 'Everything fits.' Earhart's disappearance was a tragic final act after a decade of newspaper and radio stories documenting her record-setting flights. On June 17, 1928, at the age of 30, she became the first woman to pilot a plane — a bright red Lockheed Vega 5B, which she called "old Bessie, the fire steed"— across the Atlantic. The endeavor made headlines across the nation. Later, she became the first person to complete a solo flight across the Pacific, traveling from California to the Hawaiian islands in 1934. Earhart was initially treated as an aviation oddity due to her gender; news reports at the time called her the first "girl" to fly across the Atlantic, and another referred to her as an "aviatrix.' But as she continued to prove her prowess in the cockpit, she gained notoriety as a great pilot, rather than as a curious outlier. Even still, she used her growing prominence to push for equality in the skies; in an interview with the Evening Star in 1929, Earhart pleaded with the public to "give women a chance in the air." "Women can qualify in the air as in any other sport. Their influence and approval are vital to the success of commercial aviation," she said at the time. "Women and girls write to me by the thousands to learn the truth about aviation and what women's chances are. There is nothing in women's make-up which would make her inferior to a man as an air pilot. The only barrier to her swift success is her lack of opportunity to receive proper training." After numerous successful and record-setting flights in the late '20s and early '30s, Earhart set her sights on a new goal: becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the planet in an aircraft. Following her disappearance, the public remained somewhat hopeful that she would be found to fly again another day. But, after a two-month search that turned up no trace of her or Noonan, the pair were presumed dead. Pettigrew has been trying to find the remains of Earhart's flight for years. He has visited Nikumaroro, and said that a period-appropriate medical vial and American-made tool were found on the island, suggesting someone from the West — perhaps Earhart — had been on the island in some capacity around the time of her disappearance. According to National Geographic, four forensic dogs and a team of archaeologists with the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery traveled to the island in 2017. During that trip, the dogs reportedly detected the scent of human remains, though none were actually found. No one lives on Nikumaroro, and there is scant evidence of there ever being continuous inhabitation on the island. Two years later, famed ocean explorer Robert Ballard led an expedition to locate Earhart's plane or evidence that it had landed on the island. After days of searching both the island's cliffs and the surrounding waters, Ballard found no evidence of a wreck on the island. "We felt like if her plane was there, we would have found it pretty early in the expedition," Allison Fundis, Ballard's chief operating officer for the expedition, told The New York Times. The Executive Director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, Richard Gillespie said he doubts the Purdue expedition will turn up any evidence of Earhart's plane on their upcoming expedition. 'We've looked there in that spot, and there's nothing there,' he told NBC News. Gillespie has launched a dozen expeditions over the last 35 years searching for Earhart, including searches of Nikumaroro. He said the satellite image guiding the Purdue expedition shows an overturned coconut palm tree with a root ball that had been washed up by a storm. 'I understand the desire to find a piece of Amelia Earhart's airplane. God knows we've tried,' he said. 'But the data, the facts, do not support the hypothesis. It's as simple as that.' Despite his skepticism, Purdue will undertake the expedition regardless. The Purdue Research Foundation has extended a credit line of $500,000 to the first phase of the expedition, according to Shultz. The expedition members will depart in November and spend six days traveling to reach Nikumaroro. From there, they'll have five days on the island to investigate the object from the satellite imagery and determine whether or not it is evidence of Earhart's missing plane. 'If we hopefully solve the mystery and confirm that it is, then there will be further efforts to bring it back, hopefully to a permanent home,' Schultz said.
Yahoo
5 days ago
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A Mysterious Anomaly May Be Amelia Earhart's Plane. This Team Is Racing to Prove It.
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: 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 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.' Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the IssueGet the Issue Get the Issue 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 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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The Guardian
5 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
US researchers launch new mission to solve mystery of Amelia Earhart's fate
A new mission to locate Amelia Earhart's long-missing plane is being launched, researchers announced on Wednesday, following fresh clues that suggest she may have crash-landed on a remote island in the South Pacific. A satellite image may show part of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E protruding from the sand on Nikumaroro, an isolated island in Kiribati about 1,000 miles from Fiji, according to Richard Pettigrew, head of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, a non-profit based in Oregon. 'What we have here is maybe the greatest opportunity ever to finally close the case,' Pettigrew said in a news release. 'With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof.' Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished on 2 July 1937, exactly 88 years ago, during their attempt to circumnavigate the globe, leaving behind one of history's most puzzling aviation mysteries. Now, Purdue University, where Earhart once taught and which contributed funding for her flight, is organizing a team to travel to Nikumaroro this November. The group hopes to uncover and recover remains of the aircraft. 'We believe we owe it to Amelia and her legacy at Purdue to fulfill her wishes, if possible, to bring the Electra back to Purdue,' Steve Schultz, the university's general counsel, told NBC News. Pettigrew believes the object spotted in the satellite photo aligns in size and material with Earhart's aircraft. He also noted its position is near her intended route and close to where four of her emergency radio transmissions are thought to have originated. The image was taken in 2015, a year after a powerful cyclone may have exposed the site by shifting sand, Pettigrew said. He later presented the findings to Purdue. Additional signs suggesting Earhart's presence on the island include American-made tools and a small medicine bottle, Pettigrew added. Back in 2017, four specially trained dogs and archaeologists from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar) also explored Nikumaroro. Still, not everyone is convinced. Ric Gillespie, Tighar's executive director, has led 12 previous expeditions to the island and believes Earhart probably landed and died there. However, he doubts the satellite image shows a plane. Instead, he told NBC he thinks the object could be a coconut palm tree and root ball pushed ashore during a storm. Schultz said Earhart had intended to return the plane to Purdue after the journey so it could be studied by future aviation students. The Purdue Research Foundation has approved $500,000 in funding for the first phase of the trip. The team will take six days to reach Nikumaroro by boat and will have five days on the island to search for the object and attempt to identify it as the missing plane.
