The researchers announced on Wednesday a new expedition to find the plane of Amelia Earhart, based on evidence that suggests The famous aviator may have landed on a remote island in the South Pacific.
A satellite photo may seem that it shows the remains of the Earhart plane that appear through the sand in the small, remote and inhospitable Laguna of the island of Nikumaroro in Kiribati, almost 1,000 miles of Fiji, according to Richard Petigrew, executive director of the Institute of LEGACY Non -profit in Oregon.
In one of the most intriguing mysteries in the world, Earhart and the Fred Noonan browser disappeared while trying to fly around the world exactly 88 years ago on July 2, 1937.
Now, the University of Purdue, who had employed Earhart and helped finance his historical flight, said he will send a team to Nikumaroro in November with the hope of digging up his Lockheed Electra 10E plane and return what remains of him.
“We believe that we owe Amelia and her legacy in Purdue to fulfill her wishes, if possible, to bring the Electra back to Purdue,” said Steve Schultz, general advisor to Purdue.
The satellite photo was captured in 2015, a year after an intense tropical cyclone changed the sand, potentially revealing the plane, Pettigrew said, who brought the evidence to Purdue.
He said that the size and composition of the object coincide with the Earhart plane. The location is also close to the planned flight route of Earhart and almost precisely where four of its radio calls to obtain help seem to originate, said Pettigrew, who has traveled to Nikumaroro.
“Satisfies all criteria,” he said. “Everything fits.”
The archaeologist, who has tried to solve the disappearance of Earhart for years, said that another evidence, including the discovery of American manufacturing tools and a medicine road, suggests that Earhart may have been in Nikumaroro.
And in 2017, four forensic dogs and a team of archaeologists with the International Group for the recovery of historical airplanes (Tighar) ventured to Nikumaroro, where the canines indicated that they had detected the aroma of human remains, according to National Geographic.
Even so, there has been no clear proof of his presence there, said Pettigrew, and the object seen in the satellite photo has been difficult to achieve. In the images taken since 2015, it has been hidden again under the sand, he said.
“What we lack now so far is what you call, what I call evidence of the smoking gun,” he said.
The executive director of Tighar, Ric Gillespie, doubts that they find that test.
Gillespie’s team in the Earhart project has made a dozen expeditions for 35 years and has recovered other physical tests that believe that Nikumaroro is where Earhart landed and died. But he believes that the object in the satellite image is a coconut palm tree with a ball, washed in a storm.
“We have looked there in that place, and there is nothing there,” he said.
Gillespie, who published the book “One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy” last year, said the plane would not be hidden in the sand but buried in coral rubble.
“I understand the desire to find a piece of plane from Amelia Earhart. God knows we have tried,” he said. “But the data, the facts, do not support the hypothesis. It is as simple as that.”
Earhart was the first woman to fly only through the Atlantic Ocean.
The Trailblazer worked in Purdue, serving as a career for women and advisor in his department of aeronautical engineering, from 1935 until his disappearance in 1937, according to the University’s website.
Schultz, the general advisor of Purdue, said that the plan after Earhart’s flight was to return the plane to school to be studied by future aeronautical engineers and aviation students.
The Purdue Research Foundation has given the first phase of the expedition a credit line of $ 500,000, said Schultz.
The explorers team will take six days to reach Nikumaroro by boat in November, he said. Then they will have another five days on the island to find the object in the sand and identify it as the missing plane.
“If we hope to solve the mystery and confirm that it is, then there will be more efforts to bring it back, hopefully to a permanent home,” said Schultz.
