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An expedition has reached a remote island in the South Pacific where it believes Amelia Earhart\u2019s plane may have landed when she disappeared nearly 90 years ago.
A group of researchers with the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University arrived Tuesday at the island of Nikumaroro, the university announced in a press release. The crew members will hike their way toward a lagoon where an anomaly was spotted on satellite images.
Earhart mysteriously vanished in the summer of 1937 while flying around the world, hoping to be the first woman to accomplish such a feat. On the morning of July 2, the U.S. Coast Guard ship lost contact with Earhart and her navigator as they attempted to fly to Howland Island.
The last transmissions from the two-person crew were Earhart reporting unexpected cloudy weather before she told the Coast Guard crew that she could not find them and that her plane was running out of fuel.
She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were never heard from again.
It was believed that Earhart crash-landed, but a weekslong search by the U.S. government at the time found no trace of the plane. Nearly a century later, the historic female aviator\u2019s disappearance remains one of the world\u2019s great mysteries.
The island of Nikumaroro is very close to where Earhart\u2019s plane was at the time of her last radio transmissions. It\u2019s an uninhabited island that\u2019s part of the Phoenix Islands belonging to the Republic of Kiribati.
Some artifacts have been found on the island that indicate Earhart and Noonan\u2019s plane may have landed there, including glass bottles from the 1930s and a woman\u2019s makeup compact.
It\u2019s expected to take the crew at least three weeks between travel and searching the island before they return home, according to Purdue University.
The project is a \u201chuge logistical feat,\u201d according to Steve Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel at Purdue University. Schultz, who is also one of three members of the crew from Purdue, noted last week that moving more than a dozen people with large amounts of equipment has become its own obstacle.
\u201cEven when you think you\u2019ve done enough planning and preparation, everything has to fall into place once you\u2019re underway,\u201d he said. \u201cThe amazing thing is that it has been a series of small victories.\u201d
Now that they\u2019ve reached Nikumaroro, they\u2019ll have to hack through heavy vegetation as they make their way to the lagoon and then attempt to identify the object as Earhart\u2019s lost Lockheed Electra 10E. The journey is further complicated by the very large crabs that inhabit the island, preventing the crew from camping on the land. Each night, the crew members will have to return to their boat and sleep in pods below deck.
The expedition is being led by Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute. He said in a statement prior to the team embarking on the journey that the project comes with \u201can array of strong feelings.\u201d
\u201cI feel truly lucky to be in a position to possibly solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time, whether or not that happens,\u201d Pettigrew said.
If the crew does end up finding Earhart\u2019s plane, Purdue University\u2019s research foundation hopes to raise money to excavate the aircraft and bring it back to Indiana.
I am a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital, covering a range of news-of-the-day topics. My job is to report in a timely manner on crime, mass shootings, war coverage, domestic and international affairs, pop culture and more.
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