Finding Amelia: The enduring quest to solve Amelia Earhart’s disappearance

A trailblazing aviator went missing while attempting to fly around the world. Could an unusual object in a satellite image finally unlock the mystery?

By Katie Hunt and Eleanor Stubbs

Published October 7, 2026

Amelia Earhart disappeared decades ago on July 2, 1937, during a daring attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, but researchers are still searching for answers. Her Lockheed 10E Electra aircraft had already covered 22,000 miles (35,405 kilometers) when she was last seen taking off from Lae, New Guinea, on what was expected to be a grueling 18-hour journey to Howland Island, a tiny speck of land in the Pacific Ocean. She had 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers) left to travel before achieving her goal.

There are conflicting theories about what happened to Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, and despite dozens of searches, the location of her lost plane remains unknown. An expedition led by Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, that’s launching this week marks the latest attempt to solve what might be the world’s greatest aviation mystery.

A timeline of Earhart’s last flight holds clues to her final moments:

Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, depart Lae, New Guinea.

The video above shows the last known footage of Earhart, captured before she took off from New Guinea. Also pictured is a diagram of the Lockheed 10E Electra aircraft and Amelia sitting on top of it before her final trip.

Radio operators on the US Coast Guard vessel Itasca — which was waiting for Earhart off Howland Island in the Pacific with fuel — receive messages from her plane.

We must be on you, but cannot see you. Gas is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.

— Amelia Earhart, decoded summary from radio log

The Itasca receives a final message from Earhart’s plane, still with good reception.

We are on the line of position 157-337. Will repeat message. We will repeat this message on 6210 kilocycles. Wait. Listening on 6210 kilocycles. We are running north and south.

She was never heard from again

That’s where opinions about Earhart’s and Noonan’s ultimate fate diverge — though few would contest that the odds were stacked against them.

At 2,556 miles (4,113 kilometers) in length, this leg of her journey — 31 of 34 total — was always going to be the most daunting. This stage involved more time in the air than Earhart’s solo crossing of the Atlantic five years earlier and required her to locate and land on the tiny Pacific island of Howland, which is just 2 miles (3 kilometers) long and less than 2 miles (3 kilometers) across. Her Electra aircraft was loaded up with the maximum 1,150 gallons of fuel, the extra tanks accommodated by removing the passenger seats.

“They were flying all night and then trying to pick out this tiny island. We know that there were some clouds in the area, and the sun's in her face as she's talking. It's just really, really difficult,” said Dorothy Cochrane, an Earhart expert and retired curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

The disaster and presumed death of the 39-year-old aviator dominated news headlines and gripped the public imagination.

The United States staged an unprecedented attempt to find the crew and the plane. The efforts covered an area around the size of Texas, according to the Smithsonian, but came to nothing.

Her only recorded coordinates from that ill-fated leg of the journey, captured in the early part of the flight, suggested she was on track for Howland. At 2:45 a.m. local time, radio operators aboard the Itasca began to receive Earhart’s intermittent voice messages, but they never spotted her plane or established two-way communication.

After Earhart and Noonan went missing, the US government conducted its largest-ever search for a lost aircraft from July 2 to July 18, 1937.

The 16-day mission involved nine vessels, 4,000 personnel and 66 aircraft. The effort cost more than $4 million — which today would be about $88 million — but found no trace of the crew or the plane.

For decades, historians have debated how and where Earhart went missing. Some of the more controversial theories seem implausible: A 2017 documentary alleged she was taken prisoner by the Japanese and executed.

The main school of thought — and the official determination made following the massive US government-led search — suggests that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and their Electra crashed into the Pacific Ocean near their intended destination.

Others believe that Earhart and Noonan landed their plane 400 miles (644 kilometers) to the south of Howland — on or near Nikumaroro Island, then known as Gardner Island — and became, at least for a while, castaways.

There, proponents of this hypothesis suggest, the duo made repeated distress calls for help using the radio on the plane, but subsequently died of thirst or hunger, their bodies perhaps eaten by the coral-fringed island’s huge coconut crabs.

Aircraft did fly over the uninhabited island during the initial search following Earhart’s disappearance, but “no one was seen,” according to the US Coast Guard’s report. Several expeditions have since made their way to Nikumaroro to explore the castaway hypothesis, which draws on the work of Ric Gillespie, author of 2024 book “One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy” and the cofounder of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR.

He has visited Nikumaroro a dozen times, turning up artifacts he says might have belonged to Earhart. These pieces of potential evidence include a freckle ointment jar and a sextant, a navigating tool like the one Earhart's copilot used. Gillespie also points to human bones found on Nikumaroro Island in 1940 that subsequently went missing. An analysis of the recorded proportions of the remains appears to suggest a match to a woman of Earhart’s build.

Artifacts found on Nikumaroro that TIGHAR believes may have been connected to Earhart. (From top left) A jar similar in style to that of Dr. C.H. Berry's Freckle Ointment. Earhart was known to have been concerned about her freckles; fragments of red material chemically consistent with an early 20th century cosmetic; a broken knife, similar to a knife listed in the Electra's inventory; a shattered glass bottle. The bottle design was patented on May 30, 1933, according to TIGHAR research. (TIGHAR.org)

A team from Purdue University led by archaeologist Rick Pettigrew is the latest to set course for Nikumaroro, which is today part of Republic of Kiribati, in the hope of discovering Earhart’s plane. The researchers plan to investigate a blurry object first spotted in satellite imagery in 2020, known as the Taraia Object, which they believe could be wreckage from the plane. “We have a singular focus, which is to examine the object and make that identification. That's a critical piece of information upon which everything else depends,” said Pettigrew, founder and executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute in Eugene, Oregon.

Gillespie, who said he has been to the spot in question during visits prior to 2020, believes the Taraia Object is a partially submerged tree. In his telling of the story, the plane was destroyed long ago, ground up by the power of the ocean surf against the coral reef.

“He's not going to find anything,” Gillespie said. “I've been back and forth with Rick about this. We've known each other many years. We've just agreed to disagree.”

The Taraia Object, first spotted in 2020, is visible in recent satellite imagery. (Archaeological Legacy Institute)

But regardless of whether the Taraia Object is another dead end, the idea that Earhart ended up an island castaway is far from widely accepted, Cochrane said. Most likely, the plane crashed and fell to the ocean floor not far from their intended destination.

“You have to follow the facts and the facts are that she says she's coming into Howland Island after all this time and starting to run low on fuel,” Cochrane added. “Then an hour later, the fuel's getting less and less and by the end, they can feel the fear in her voice.”

However, repeated efforts to locate Earhart’s plane near Howland have come up empty.

A 2024 search by ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision sparked hope when sonar imagery seemed to reveal something that looked like a submerged aircraft. The effort ultimately turned up some rocks formed in the shape of a plane.

The shape of a plane revealed in sonar imagery by Deep Sea Vision in January 2024 turned out to be a rock formation when a team revisited the site in November the same year. (Deep Sea Vision, an Eco Minerals Company)

Deep sea exploration company Nauticos has completed three expeditions since 2002, which along with ground covered by a 2009 expedition led by the Waitt Institute for Discovery, have, in total, covered 3,610 square miles (9,350 square kilometers) — an area roughly the size of Connecticut. As of summer 2026, the Nauticos researchers were still trying to raise the $8 million to $10 million necessary to embark on what they hope will be a final expedition to explore a search area narrowed by new information from experiments using a replica of Earhart’s radio system.

High-stakes endeavor

Earhart was no stranger to high-stakes endeavors. She set many aviation records. Her most impressive, according to Cochrane, was completing the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman in May 1932. She was the second human to do so — just five years after aviator Charles Lindbergh pioneered the feat.

That journey of Earhart’s included a heart-stopping moment that she recounted with casual aplomb in a speech she made in London not long after she arrived. Archivists at the US Library of Congress just this year digitized long-lost audio of the speech discovered in their collection.

“Something happened which had never happened before in my 12 years of flying, that is, the altimeter, the instrument required to register altitude — height above ground — failed,” Earhart said of her 15-hour flight across the Atlantic. “The hand swung around the dial in such a manner that I knew it was out of commission for the rest of the night.” A snippet of the speech was preserved on a tiny 78-rpm record and included as a promotional giveaway in the cover of her memoir “The Fun of It,” which published later that year.

Cochrane believes that Earhart was an accomplished aviator who forged her own path at a time when aviation had no place for women. It’s easy to forget now that women didn’t begin to pilot commercial flights until the 1970s.

Earhart’s radio communications skills let her down that fateful day in 1937, Cochrane said. Originally, she had planned to have radio operator Harry Manning on the journey, but he dropped out after a delay following the first leg of the trip. What’s more, neither Earhart, nor Noonan, knew Morse code, which could have made it easier to establish two-way communication with the Itasca, Cochrane added.

“Those were the two big failure points, because you know she got around the rest of the world pretty well. She was making her landings and takeoffs, and they were getting where they needed to go,” Cochrane said.

“She's a pioneering woman in aviation. She's doing things that no woman has ever done, and she made mistakes, too. She wasn't perfect.”

一位开创性的飞行员在尝试环球飞行时失踪。卫星图像中一个不寻常的物体能否最终解开这个谜团？

作者：凯蒂·亨特和埃莉诺·斯塔布斯

发布日期：2026年10月7日

阿梅莉亚·埃尔哈特于1937年7月2日失踪，当时她正试图成为首位环球飞行的女性，但几十年过去了，研究人员仍在寻找答案。她驾驶的洛克希德10E伊莱克特拉飞机最后一次被人看到时，已经飞行了22000英里（35405公里）。当时她正从新几内亚的莱城起飞，前往位于太平洋上的豪兰岛，预计这将是一段艰苦的18小时航程。距离她完成环球飞行目标还有7000英里（11265公里）的路程。

关于埃尔哈特和她的领航员弗雷德·努南究竟遭遇了什么，众说纷纭。尽管进行了数十次搜寻，她失踪的飞机仍然下落不明。本周，由印第安纳州西拉法叶的普渡大学牵头的探险队将展开最新一次尝试，试图解开这或许是世界上最伟大的航空谜团。

埃尔哈特最后一次飞行的时间线蕴藏着她生命最后时刻的线索：

阿梅莉亚·埃尔哈特和她的领航员弗雷德·努南从新几内亚莱城出发。

上面的视频是目前已知的埃尔哈特最后一段影像，拍摄于她从新几内亚起飞之前。视频中还展示了洛克希德10E“伊莱克特拉”飞机的示意图，以及埃尔哈特在最后一次飞行前坐在飞机顶部的照片。

美国海岸警卫队船只“伊塔斯卡号”上的无线电操作员——当时该船在太平洋的豪兰岛附近等待埃尔哈特，船上备有燃料——收到了来自她飞机的讯息。

我们应该就在你附近，但看不到你。燃料快用完了。无线电联系不上你。我们飞行高度为1000英尺。

——阿梅莉亚·埃尔哈特，摘自无线电日志的解码摘要

“伊塔斯卡”号飞机收到了来自埃尔哈特飞机的最后一条信息，信号依然良好。

我们位于157-337号位置线上。将重复此消息。我们将在6210千赫兹频率上重复此消息。请稍候。正在监听6210千赫兹频率。我们正在南北方向运行。

从此她杳无音讯

关于埃尔哈特和努南的最终命运，人们的看法出现了分歧——尽管很少有人会否认，他们当时的处境非常不利。

这段航程长达2556英里（4113公里），占她整个34段旅程中的第31段，注定是最艰巨的一段。这一阶段的飞行时间比五年前埃尔哈特单人横跨大西洋的飞行时间还要长，而且她还需要找到并降落在太平洋上一个名叫豪兰的小岛，该岛长仅2英里（3公里），宽也不足2英里（3公里）。她的伊莱克特拉飞机装载了最多1150加仑的燃油，为了容纳额外的油箱，不得不拆除乘客座椅。

“他们整夜都在飞行，然后试图找到这个小岛。我们知道当时附近有一些云，而且她说话的时候阳光直射她的脸。这真的非常非常困难，”多萝西·科克伦说道，她是埃尔哈特专家，也是华盛顿特区史密森国家航空航天博物馆的退休馆长。

这起灾难以及这位39岁飞行员的推定死亡占据了新闻头条，牵动着公众的心。

美国展开了一场史无前例的搜寻行动，试图找到机组人员和失事飞机。据史密森学会称，搜寻范围覆盖了大约德克萨斯州大小的区域，但最终一无所获。

在她那段不幸旅程中，唯一记录下来的坐标信息是在飞行初期获得的，显示她当时正朝着豪兰岛方向飞行。当地时间凌晨2点45分，伊塔斯卡号上的无线电操作员开始断断续续地收到埃尔哈特的语音信息，但他们始终没有发现她的飞机，也未能建立双向通信。

埃尔哈特和努南失踪后，美国政府于 1937 年 7 月 2 日至 7 月 18 日开展了有史以来规模最大的搜寻失踪飞机行动。

为期16天的搜寻行动出动了9艘舰艇、4000名人员和66架飞机。行动耗资超过400万美元（相当于今天的约8800万美元），但最终仍未找到机组人员或飞机的任何踪迹。

几十年来，历史学家一直在争论埃尔哈特是如何以及在哪里失踪的。一些更具争议性的理论似乎难以置信：2017年的一部纪录片声称她被日军俘虏并处决。

主流观点——以及美国政府主导的大规模搜寻行动后做出的官方结论——认为埃尔哈特和努南的飞机燃料耗尽，他们的伊莱克特拉飞机在目的地附近的太平洋坠毁。

另一些人则认为，埃尔哈特和努南驾驶飞机降落在豪兰岛以南 400 英里（644 公里）处——尼库马罗罗岛（当时被称为加德纳岛）附近——并且至少有一段时间成了遇难者。

该假设的支持者认为，两人在那里多次使用飞机上的无线电发出求救信号，但随后死于口渴或饥饿，他们的尸体可能被珊瑚环绕的岛屿上巨大的椰子蟹吃掉了。

在埃尔哈特失踪后的最初搜寻中，飞机确实飞越了这座无人居住的岛屿，但据美国海岸警卫队的报告称，“没有发现任何人”。此后，多个探险队前往尼库马罗罗岛，探索遇难者假说。该假说借鉴了里克·吉莱斯皮的研究成果，他是2024年出版的《再飞一次：阿梅莉亚·埃尔哈特悲剧》一书的作者，也是国际历史飞机修复组织（TIGHAR）的联合创始人。

他曾十几次造访尼库马罗罗岛，发现了一些他认为可能属于埃尔哈特的物品。这些潜在的证据包括一个祛斑药膏罐和一个六分仪——一种类似于埃尔哈特副驾驶使用的导航工具。吉莱斯皮还指出，1940年在尼库马罗罗岛上发现的人类骨骼后来下落不明。对这些遗骸比例的分析表明，它们似乎与埃尔哈特的体型相符。

TIGHAR认为，在尼库马罗罗岛上发现的文物可能与埃尔哈特有关。（从左上角开始）一个罐子，其样式与CH·贝瑞医生的雀斑膏相似。众所周知，埃尔哈特很在意自己的雀斑；一些红色物质碎片，其化学成分与20世纪早期的一种化妆品相符；一把断刀，与“伊莱克特拉”号飞机清单中列出的刀具相似；一个破碎的玻璃瓶。根据TIGHAR的研究，这种瓶子的设计于1933年5月30日获得专利。(TIGHAR.org)

由考古学家里克·佩蒂格鲁（Rick Pettigrew）领导的普渡大学团队，是最新一支前往尼库马罗罗岛（Nikumaroro，现属基里巴斯共和国）的考古队，他们希望在那里找到埃尔哈特的飞机残骸。研究人员计划调查一个模糊的物体，该物体于2020年首次出现在卫星图像中，被称为“塔拉亚物体”（Taraia Object），他们认为这可能是飞机残骸。“我们只有一个目标，那就是检查这个物体并确定它的身份。这是至关重要的信息，其他一切都取决于此，”佩蒂格鲁说道。他是位于俄勒冈州尤金市的考古遗产研究所的创始人和执行主任。

吉莱斯皮表示，他在2020年之前曾多次到访过该地点，他认为所谓的“塔拉亚物体”是一棵部分淹没的树。据他描述，那架飞机很久以前就被摧毁了，被海浪拍打珊瑚礁的力量磨碎了。

“他什么也找不到，”吉莱斯皮说。“我和里克就这件事反复讨论过。我们认识很多年了。我们只是同意保留各自的意见。”

塔拉亚物体最早于2020年被发现，在最近的卫星图像中清晰可见。（考古遗产研究所）

但科克伦表示，无论塔拉亚物体是否又是一条死胡同，埃尔哈特最终被困在荒岛上的说法远未被广泛接受。最有可能的情况是，飞机坠毁并沉入海底，地点距离他们的预定目的地不远。

科克伦补充道：“你必须遵循事实，事实是她说，经过这么长时间，她终于抵达了豪兰岛，而且燃料开始告急。一个小时后，燃料越来越少，到最后，他们能从她的声音中感受到恐惧。”

然而，多次在豪兰岛附近寻找埃尔哈特飞机的尝试均以失败告终。

2024年，海洋勘探公司“深海视觉”（Deep Sea Vision）的一次搜寻行动燃起了希望，声呐图像似乎显示出一架水下飞机的踪迹。最终，搜寻结果只发现了一些形状像飞机的岩石。

2024年1月，深海视觉公司（Deep Sea Vision）的声呐图像显示，一个类似飞机的物体出现在水下。同年11月，当一个团队再次勘测该地点时，发现那其实是一处岩层。（深海视觉公司，隶属于Eco Minerals公司）

自2002年以来，深海勘探公司Nauticos已完成三次探险，加上2009年由韦特探索研究所（Waitt Institute for Discovery）领导的探险，总勘测面积达3610平方英里（9350平方公里），大致相当于康涅狄格州的面积。截至2026年夏季，Nauticos的研究人员仍在努力筹集800万至1000万美元，以开展他们希望的最后一次探险，探索一个根据使用埃尔哈特无线电系统复制品进行的实验获得的新信息而缩小的搜索区域。

高风险的努力

埃尔哈特对高风险的挑战并不陌生。她创造了多项航空纪录。据科克伦称，她最令人印象深刻的成就是于1932年5月完成了女性首次单人跨大西洋飞行。她是继飞行员查尔斯·林白之后，第二个完成这一壮举的人——仅仅五年之后。

埃尔哈特的那段旅程中，曾发生过一次惊心动魄的经历。抵达伦敦后不久，她在一次演讲中以轻松的姿态讲述了这段经历。就在今年，美国国会图书馆的档案管理员们将这段尘封已久的演讲录音数字化，这段录音是在他们的馆藏中发现的。

“在我12年的飞行生涯中，发生了一件从未发生过的事情，那就是高度表——用来记录高度（离地高度）的仪器——失灵了，”埃尔哈特在谈到她那次长达15小时的跨大西洋飞行时说道。“指针在表盘上乱转，我知道它当晚就彻底罢工了。” 这段讲话的片段被录制在一张小小的78转唱片上，并作为赠品附在她同年晚些时候出版的回忆录《飞行的乐趣》（The Fun of It）的封面上。

科克伦认为，埃尔哈特是一位技艺精湛的飞行员，在航空业对女性毫无容身之地的年代，她开辟了自己的道路。如今人们很容易忘记，直到20世纪70年代，女性才开始驾驶商业航班。

科克伦说，1937年那个命运攸关的日子里，埃尔哈特的无线电通讯技能让她失灵了。她原本计划让无线电操作员哈里·曼宁随行，但曼宁在第一段航程结束后因延误而退出。科克伦补充说，更糟糕的是，埃尔哈特和努南都不懂摩尔斯电码，而掌握摩尔斯电码本可以更容易地与“伊塔斯卡”号建立双向通讯。

“那是两个主要的失败点，因为你知道，她在世界其他地方的飞行都相当顺利。她起降都很正常，他们也都能到达目的地，”科克伦说。

“她是航空领域的先驱女性。她做着前所未有的事情，而且她也犯过错误。她并不完美。”