Expedition sails to Nikumaroro to inspect possible Earhart wreck

A team from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University is heading to Nikumaroro Atoll in Kiribati to examine an object researchers think could be Amelia Earhart’s missing Lockheed Electra 10-E. The expedition hopes to test whether the object, near the edge of a lagoon, is wreckage from the plane Earhart flew when she vanished in 1937 with navigator Fred Noonan during an around-the-world flight. The group is traveling aboard the Kiribati National Shipping Line vessel Marin Mainiku. Purdue said the object appears in aerial images dating to 1938 and in later satellite imagery, adding to a long-running theory that Earhart and Noonan landed on or near the remote atoll.