Answers imminent in Purdue's search for Amelia Earhart plane

Driving the news: A crew that includes three Boilermaker representatives left Tarawa Wednesday for a roughly 830-nautical-mile voyage to Nikumaroro with an expected arrival date of Oct. 13.

• Originally planned for November 2025, delays with the government of Kiribati's approval process and the looming cyclone season pushed the trip to this fall.

Zoom in: Researchers will investigate the "Taraia Object," a plane-shaped anomaly visible in satellite and aerial imagery. The object was first spotted in 2020 and appears in photos dating to 1938.

Between the lines: The team is testing a hypothesis that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan landed on the island after running out of fuel during their 1937 round-the-world flight.

• Decades of circumstantial evidence, including 1930s-era artifacts and human bones found on the island, support the theory.

What they're saying: "As we finally arrived at our point of departure here in Tarawa, it struck home that we'd flown over a majority of the portion that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were attempting to traverse when they were lost," expedition member and Purdue alumna Sirisha Bandla said in a statement. "Now we hope to have a chance to bring closure to their story."

Flashback: Earhart worked at the university beginning in 1935, and Purdue helped fund the Lockheed Electra she was flying when she disappeared.

What's next: The expedition is expected to spend several days searching Nikumaroro before returning to Tarawa around Oct. 22.

• Archaeological Legacy Institute executive director Richard Pettigrew said he expects an ID "within just a couple of days" of arrival.