A satellite object on Nikumaroro can’t be confirmed as Amelia Earhart’s plane and was likely a cluster of trees

A blurry shape in 2020 satellite imagery of Nikumaroro, a remote Pacific atoll, cannot be confirmed as the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E, and an expedition that went to look at it now concludes it was likely a cluster of large trees. The finding comes from a team led by the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University, which announced its results on Oct. 19, local time.

The tech news worth your time: 400,000+ professionals from Google, Apple and OpenAI read Techpresso, a daily email with the most interesting tech news and insights.

Subscribe to Techpresso →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.

The anomaly, called the Taraia Object, sits near the Taraia Peninsula. It had drawn attention because the imagery showed a plane-shaped feature with a reflective surface, and Purdue says the team treated it as a hypothesis to test rather than a find to announce. The team’s answer is cautious in both directions: the plane is not there to be confirmed, and the researchers’ own wording is hedged: the object was “likely” trees.

What the Taraia Object turned out to be

In its statement, Purdue said the evidence indicates that the object was a cluster of large trees deposited along the peninsula’s sandspit. By the time the team arrived, most of the debris had broken apart and washed away, leaving one Y-shaped segment that was much smaller than the anomaly visible in the imagery. The Purdue newsroom statement says the fragment’s reflective look came from a carbonate coating, not metal, and that other items carried the same hardened mix of coral sand.

Rick Pettigrew, the institute’s executive director and the project director, said the team had accomplished its goal of determining what the Taraia Object was, according to Archaeology magazine’s Oct. 21 report. Steve Schultz, Purdue’s general counsel and a field assistant on the trip, said the group had set out to test a hypothesis, not to guarantee a particular result, and had followed the evidence to the end.

How the expedition worked

According to Purdue, the expedition left Tarawa, Kiribati, on Oct. 6 and took five days to reach Nikumaroro by sea. Weather extended the trip beyond its plan; the team spent seven days near the island, including four days onshore setting up field operations and doing investigative work. The methods combined maritime and terrestrial archaeology, with work in the lagoon and on land to check the satellite anomaly on the ground.

A CNN report carried by KRDO describes a 17-person team that surveyed the lagoon with a magnetometer and sonar to look for objects beneath the sediment. The group included archaeologists, technology specialists, Kiribati government representatives, a medic and filmmakers. Purdue’s team list names maritime archaeologists Michael Krivor and William Wilson of RECON Offshore, and Meere Kenana of Kiribati Culture and Museum among the representatives from Kiribati.

What the search has and has not found

Purdue says no wreckage from Earhart’s plane was confirmed. It adds that a steel tube about 30 inches long was found in the lagoon near the peninsula, and that it and other artifacts will be studied further. Straight Arrow News reports that, besides the Taraia work, the team also found 1930s glass bottles and a woman’s makeup compact, which researchers say could fit the castaway hypothesis, though the article notes that none of the finds conclusively link them to the island.

The castaway hypothesis holds that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan landed on Nikumaroro’s reef flat after disappearing in 1937 on a flight toward Howland Island, instead of crashing at sea. The team still regards that case as strong, citing radio bearings, a 2018 analysis of bones found in 1940, 1930s artifacts and the Bevington Object photograph; Pettigrew told CNN the evidence for it remained very strong, and Schultz said the Taraia finding does not detract from it. Both claims remain the team’s reading, not a settled conclusion, and nothing announced so far ties any artifact on the atoll directly to Earhart or Noonan.

Others are less convinced. Dorothy Cochrane, a retired Smithsonian curator and Earhart expert, told CNN, “Nikumaroro Island has been searched more than 15 times, to no avail.” The official view, she noted in that coverage, is that the aircraft ran out of fuel and went down in the Pacific near Howland Island. Flying magazine likewise reported that the team found no evidence of the Electra at Nikumaroro and described the Taraia Object as likely tree roots covered in coral sand.

Purdue has pledged to continue the search. Schultz said in the statement that Earhart kept flying and the team will keep searching. The artifacts brought back, including the steel tube, are still to be studied, so the expedition’s closing chapter is analysis in a laboratory and not another landing on the beach. Until that analysis is published, the tube and the other finds are items for study, not evidence that Earhart or Noonan was ever on the island.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

The tech news worth your time: Subscribe to Techpresso →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.