A new mission aimed at solving the mystery of what happened to aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart has been postponed until 2026.
A team from Purdue University had planned to begin surveying a remote, uninhabited island in the Western Pacific Ocean next month, where satellite images identified an object that could be the wreckage of Earhart’s Model 10E Electra aircraft.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. She was 39 at the time.
Researchers will examine the so-called Taraia Object, an anomaly located in a lagoon on Nikumaroro Island. Nikumaroro is part of the Republic of Kiribati, situated north of Samoa and Fiji, and southeast of the Marshall Islands.
The decision to postpone the mission comes as the team awaits “additional clearance from the Kiribati government” based on seasonal weather factors, Purdue University announced on Monday.
“Postponing a complex project like this poses logistical and financial challenges for us and our partners, but we have to take it in stride,” said Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, which is leading the expedition. “We’ve overcome other challenges to this project over the past four years, and we will get past this one, too.”
The Taraia Object was first noticed in satellite imagery in 2020 and later confirmed to be in aerial photographs of the lagoon as far back as 1938. The Archaeological Legacy Institute said its research “strongly suggests” the Taraia Object is Earhart’s aircraft.
The mission does have its skeptics.
Ric Gillespie, head of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, says the Nikumaroro hypothesis isn’t new and hasn’t produced convincing evidence of Earhart’s presence yet. He told NBC News, “We’ve looked there in that spot, and there’s nothing there,” suggesting the satellite image likely shows a coconut palm tree washed up in a storm.
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