New search for Amelia Earhart's plane focuses on Nikumaroro Island<br>GRAPHICS<br>Amelia Earhart<br>Add Topic

Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937. New evidence could find her plane.<br>Janet Loehrke George PetrasUSA TODAY

Updated Aug. 13, 2026, 6:54 p.m. ET<br>Hear this story

Though she vanished nearly 90 years ago, flying legend Amelia Earhart never really left us.<br>The world remains fascinated – some say haunted – by her life, what she accomplished, and what she dared to try. And now a new search is getting underway for Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E, which was lost over the Pacific during her attempt to fly around the world in 1937.<br>The effort is the 20th organized search since Earhart, the celebrated pilot, and navigator Fred Noonan vanished July 2, 1937.<br>They were flying east from Lae in Papua New Guinea, trying to reach Howland Island, a tiny speck of land smaller than New York's Central Park, located between Australia and Hawaii.<br>Can't see our graphics? Click here to reload the page.<br>The newest expedition, conducted by the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University, will dig up what's known as the Taraia Object, a plane-shaped anomaly buried in ocean sediment in a lagoon of Nikumaroro Island. That’s a coral atoll about 350 miles southeast of Howland in the Pacific Ocean.

On the day Earhart went missing, the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca was waiting near Howland to refuel the Electra after it landed. The ship received voice messages from Earhart as her signal increased. She said the plane was almost out of fuel.<br>Neither Earhart nor Noonan knew Morse code, so there was no two-way contact, according to the Smithsonian Institute’s analysis of government records.<br>It’s commonly believed Earhart ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific while searching for Howland. The U.S. Navy reached that conclusion after its 16-day search in 1937.<br>However, sophisticated satellite imagery, reported radio transmissions and other discoveries have lead some to theorize Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro reef. That theory says the two survived briefly as castaways and the bus-sized plane was swept into the sea.

The Nikumaroro theory is chiefly associated with TIGHAR, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has investigated the idea since 1988.<br>TIGHAR conducted a dozen expeditions to the island between 1989 and 2017. It says "whatever remains of the Electra lies in deep water off the island’s west end."<br>The lost plane: Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra<br>What will the new expedition do on Nikumaroro?<br>The 16-member Taraia Object Expedition will depart in early October. The group will spend several days on Nikumaroro, most of them in the lagoon, where they'll use a hydraulic dredge to carefully remove sediment from what could be the Electra.<br>The team will be looking to identify the largest sections of the aircraft, the fuselage and wings. If they find rivets in aluminum aircraft skin, a comparison of their spacing and geometry will help identification.

If the ALI/Purdue team locates the Electra, they won't go inside it but will return the following year for a full-scale excavation. Future efforts include removal of the aircraft and other remnants, which would be brought back to the United States.<br>Steve Schultz, senior vice president of Purdue University, said the institution is discussing an agreement with Kiribati, the island nation that maintains control of Nikumaroro, to entrust Purdue with custody of the wreckage, USA TODAY reported.

Earhart’s connection to Purdue dates to 1935, the university says. She was a career counselor for women and an adviser to Purdue’s Department of Aeronautics. The Amelia Earhart Terminal is part of the Purdue University Airport.<br>Where explorers have searched for Amelia Earhart<br>What clues led to Nikumaroro?<br>ALI/Purdue says the Taraia Object was revealed in satellite imagery in 2020, but photographs show it appears to have been in the same location in the lagoon since 1938. Other evidence includes:<br>Radio bearings recorded from 1937 transmissions by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and Pan American World Airways, converge on Nikumaroro.<br>Human bones were discovered on the island in 1940. A 2018 analysis of bone measurements suggests they belonged to a woman of Earhart’s stature.<br>Artifacts found on Nikumaroro included a woman’s shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar and a medicine vial. All dated to the 1930s.<br>The Bevington Object, a photographic anomaly on the Nikumaroro reef captured three months after the Electra’s disappearance, appears to represent one of the plane’s landing gears.<br>What happened in past searches for Earhart?<br>In addition to the 12 TIGHAR expeditions, other searches include:<br>1937<br>U.S. Navy and Coast Guard<br>Where was the search? The initial search centered on Howland Island. It expanded west/northwest over open ocean and southeast toward the Phoenix Islands, including Nikumaroro.<br>How long: 16 days (July 2-18)<br>Type: Mostly open-ocean search by ships...