HISTORY IN HIDING

Satellite Image Sparks Fresh Hunt for Amelia Earhart’s Plane

A satellite image and a remote island may hold the key to one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

Researchers are embarking on a new expedition to find Amelia Earhart’s plane after a satellite image appeared to show an aircraft wreckage partially buried in the sand on a remote island in the Pacific, suggesting the famed aviator may have crash-landed there. Earhart, who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, vanished with navigator Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe. 88 years later, Purdue University is sending a team to the island of Nikumaroro in Kiribati in hopes of uncovering the Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft. The island, about 1,000 miles north of Fiji, aligns closely with the origin point of four of Earhart’s radio distress calls, Richard Pettigrew, the executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, told NBC News. Other clues—like American-made tools and a medicine vial found on Nikumaroro, and a 2017 expedition in which forensic dogs detected the scent of human remains—also suggest Earhart may have been on the island. But Ric Gillespie, executive director of the group behind the 2017 expedition, believes the object in the satellite image is a coconut palm tree. “We’ve looked there in that spot, and there’s nothing there,” he said.