The expedition searching for traces of Amelia Earhart’s missing aircraft near a remote island in the South Pacific yielded no results. Researchers reported this on Sunday, October 18, UNN writes, citing NBC News.
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Researchers from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University set out this month on the "Taraia Object" expedition to Nikumaroro, an uninhabited coral atoll in the Phoenix Islands archipelago, which belongs to the Republic of Kiribati.
The team sought to identify an anomaly first detected in satellite images in 2020. Experts have long suspected that Nikumaroro was the landing site of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who disappeared in July 1937.
However, the expedition "found no compelling evidence supporting the hypothesis that the wreckage" of Earhart’s aircraft is located "in the lagoon on a remote atoll in the South Pacific," according to a university press release.
"We believe it is most likely that the object was a collection of debris that accumulated here," said Ric Gillespie, executive director of ALI, in a video message.
The expedition determined that the anomaly was most likely a "collection of large trees deposited along the sandy pit of the peninsula." By the time the team arrived, most of the "debris had fragmented and been washed away." Only a Y-shaped segment remained, constituting just a small part of the anomaly’s original size as observed from the satellite.
The surface of the anomaly, which had "long been associated with the idea that the object consisted of metal," turned out to be a carbonate layer, that is, a layer of carbon-rich sediment.
"We achieved our goal—to determine what the Taraia Object was," Gillespie said. "Our team remains in excellent spirits and is proud of what it has accomplished."
Earhart sought to become the first woman to fly around the world when she and Noonan disappeared aboard their Lockheed Electra 10-E.
On the morning of July 2, 1937, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel lost contact with them as they were attempting to reach Howland Island northwest of Nikumaroro.
The expedition searching for Earhart’s aircraft departed from Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati on October 6 and sailed for five days to Nikumaroro.
Although it did not solve one of the world’s greatest mysteries, the expedition said its efforts provide compelling support for the broader castaway theory—the idea that Earhart and Noonan did not crash into the sea but landed on Nikumaroro’s flat reef and became stranded there.
Some artifacts found on the island indicate that Earhart and Noonan’s aircraft may have landed there, including 1930s glass bottles and a woman’s cosmetics case, the expedition reported.
During the expedition, "a significant number of artifacts were discovered as a result of marine and terrestrial archaeological work, including a steel tube approximately 76 cm long, found in the lagoon near the Taraia peninsula," which will be studied further.
"Amelia Earhart never gave up—she continued to push boundaries and fly into the unknown," said Steve Schultz, Purdue University’s general counsel and a member of the expedition, in a statement. "That same fire fuels our search. She continued to fly, and we will continue the search."