New expedition will seek to locate Amelia Earhart's lost plane

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Dozens heard Amelia Earhart's telephone for assistance

Dozens heard Amelia Earhart's distress signals, researchers say 02:38

An expedition to a distant and tiny land this autumn volition effort to find Amelia Earhart's plane successful the Pacific Ocean.

The effort, announced Wednesday by the Purdue Research Foundation and Archaeological Legacy Institute, volition absorption connected a "visual anomaly" successful outer and different imagery successful a lagoon astatine Nikumaroro, an land located betwixt Hawaii and Australia. Nikumaroro was antecedently known arsenic Gardner Island.

A squad volition question successful November to inspect what is dubbed the Taraia Object to find retired if it is Earhart's aircraft. 

"What we person present is possibly the top accidental ever to yet adjacent the case," Richard Pettigrew, the institute's enforcement director, said successful a quality release. "With specified a large magnitude of precise beardown evidence, we consciousness we person nary prime but to determination guardant and hopefully instrumentality with proof."

Amelia Earhart In Khartoum Amelia Earhart astatine a refueling halt successful Khartoum, Sudan, with the Lockheed Electra 10E successful which she was attempting a circumnavigational formation of the world, June 13, 1937. On a consequent signifier of the journey, Earhart and Noonan disappeared implicit the cardinal Pacific Ocean adjacent Howland Island and were aboriginal presumed dead. Getty Images

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared implicit the cardinal Pacific 88 years agone connected July 2. Flying a Lockheed 10-E Electra, Earhart was trying to go the archetypal pistillate aviator to ellipse the satellite erstwhile they vanished. 

Various theories person since emerged astir their fate. One of them suggests Earhart landed alternatively of crashed, and was marooned connected an land wherever she died. As the Purdue Research Foundation and Archaeological Legacy Institute note, this thought is called the Nikumaroro hypothesis. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a nonprofit enactment based successful Pennsylvania, has collected evidence it says supports the theory. 

A tract squad plans to question from the Marshall Islands connected Nov. 5 and walk 5 days inspecting the Taraia Object, the instauration and Archaeological Legacy Institute said successful its quality release. If the effort confirms the plane's identity, excavations volition instrumentality spot adjacent twelvemonth to effort to instrumentality what remains of the aircraft.

Earhart worked for Purdue University, and the Purdue Research Foundation helped money her attempted formation astir the world, the quality merchandise said.

"Both Earhart and her husband and manager, George Putnam, expressed their intention to return the Electra to Purdue aft her historic flight," Steven Schultz, senior vice president and wide counsel of Purdue University, said. "Based connected the evidence, we hold with ALI that this expedition offers the champion chance not lone to solve perhaps the top enigma of the 20th century, but besides to fulfill Amelia's wishes and bring the Electra home."

Sarah Lynch Baldwin

Sarah Lynch Baldwin is simply a lawman managing exertion of CBSNews.com. She helps pb nationalist and breaking quality sum and shapes editorial workflows.

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