{"id":7136,"date":"2026-07-24T17:06:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=7136"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:06:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:06:58","slug":"an-object-in-a-satellite-image-defies-explanation-could-it-solve-one-of-aviations-greatest-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=7136","title":{"rendered":"An object in a satellite image defies explanation. Could it solve one of aviation\u2019s greatest mysteries?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n An odd shape in the South Pacific that has sparked the latest push to solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time came to light in a backyard in California. USNavy veteran Mike Ashmore was at home in 2020, scrolling through satellite images of a tiny island called Nikumaroro, when he spotted the unexpected object in a lagoon.\n<\/p>

Read more Final contenders revealed for 2026 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Halfway between Australia and Hawaii, Nikumaroro plays a key role in one of two rival hypotheses that seek to explain what happened to the famed aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who went missing in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world. Their disappearance has captivated researchers for decades and long fascinatedAshmore, a hobbyist who got hooked by a theory that the legendary pilot ended up on the island\u2019s shores.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was Apple Maps on my iPhone,\u201d Ashmore recalled about the digital exploration that led to his find. \u201cI was sitting on a swing in the morning having coffee with my dog. The day before, I went around the exterior of the island, and that morning I started going around the lagoon and something caught my eye. Then I looked closer, and I snapped a screenshot of it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Ashmore thought what he saw resembled an aircraft wing and shared the picture with a popular Amelia Earhart online forum hosted by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, a collective devoted to aviation history and archaeology. The elongated shape in the satellite imagery stirred excited discussion among members, although some said it was likely a log from a palm tree.\n <\/p>\n

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\nThe Taraia Object, first spotted in 2020, is visible in recent satellite imagery.<\/span>\n
Archaeological Legacy Institute 2025<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n The blurry object also caught the attention of archaeologist Rick Pettigrew, a longtime Earhart aficionado and executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute in Eugene, Oregon, who decided to investigate further. He said he found that the anomaly, which has since been named the Taraia Object, is visible in other aerial photos taken of the lagoon, including some captured as far back as 1938.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWith the evidence that we have now, it would be a crime for nobody to go there and look,\u201d Pettigrew said.\n <\/p>\n

\n An expedition is launching to do just that. Led by Pettigrew and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where Earhart once worked in the department of aeronautics, the new effort will make a dash straight for the Taraia Object, in the hopes it could uncover part of Earhart\u2019s plane.\n <\/p>\n

\n The team is scheduled to depart from Majuro in the Marshall Islands the first week of October and sail about 1,200 nautical miles to Nikumaroro, Pettigrew said. Once there, researchers planned to spend around five days on the small island investigating the intriguing object in the lagoon. The expedition had been expected to take place in November 2025 but was delayed at the last minute because of permit issues.\n <\/p>\n

\n If they find what they\u2019re looking for, it could lead to a landmark discovery. But the idea that Earhart ended up an island castaway is far from widely accepted, and another team of researchers is racing to close in on proof of an alternate explanation.\n <\/p>\n

\n Competing theories\n<\/h2>\n

\n Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, while seeking Howland Island, nearly 400 miles (644 kilometers) \ufeffnorthwest of Nikumaroro.Howland was a planned refueling stop on their attempt to circumnavigate the globe, a journey that had dominated news headlines and gripped the public imagination.\n <\/p>\n

\n One school of thought \u2014 and the official determination made following the massive US government-led search conducted immediately after they disappeared \u2014 suggested that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and their Lockheed 10E Electra crashed into the Pacific Ocean near their intended destination.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s a theory that has already informed several searches over the years, including a 2024 attempt by ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision that ultimately turned up some rocks formed in the shape of a plane.\n <\/p>\n

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\"Sonar<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\nSonar imagery revealed by Deep Sea Vision in January 2024.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Deep Sea Vision\/PR Newswire<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"It<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\nIt turned out to be a rock formation, above, when they revisited the site in November the same year.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Deep Sea Vision<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nSonar imagery revealed 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. <\/span>\nDeep Sea Vision\/PR Newswire<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n Guided by a new analysis of Earhart\u2019s radio communications on the day she vanished, Maine-based ocean exploration company Nauticos plans to embark on a fresh search of the ocean floor near Howland Island in 2026. The expedition will be the company\u2019s fourth attempt to locate the plane, but it says the new findings have dramatically narrowed the search area, potentially increasing its chances of success.\n <\/p>\n

\n Pettigrew and others believe that Earhart and Noonan landed their Electra safely on Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island. 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.\n <\/p>\n

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\"Amelia<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\nAmelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, pose in front of their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in Natal, Brazil, June 18, 1937, during their flight around the world.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
AP<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n However, at least five expeditions to the island and the surrounding waters since 2010 have failed to find definitive proof that Earhart and Noonan were castaways. Pettigrew took part in one expedition in 2017. Another, in 2019, involved oceanographer and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Bob Ballard, who found the Titanic wreck in 1985.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Nikumaroro theory is more plausible than some alternatives that have been put forward over the years to explain Earhart\u2019s disappearance, according to Dorothy Cochrane, who recently retired as curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. (A 2017 documentary even suggested Earhart died a Japanese prisoner.) Cochrane said the likeliest explanation is the simplest: Earhart ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean.\n <\/p>\n

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\n President Donald Trump spurred renewed interest in the decades-old mystery earlier last year when he ordered the release of records about Earhart and her final trip, although it\u2019s not clear what prompted his sudden focus on the topic \u2014 or whether there are even any records to be declassified. No new records have been released, according to CNN\u2019s reporting.\n <\/p>\n

\n The US National Archives holds publicly available information about the search for Earhart and Noonan, including her last communications with the Itasca, a US Coast Guard vessel tasked with supporting her flight, Cochrane said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cShe was an enormously popular figure of the era, all of her flights were followed by the public, and she earned her living by making these flights as a woman in the 1930s when there were really no avenues for women to be in aviation,\u201d Cochrane added.\n <\/p>\n

\n Amelia Earhart, the castaway\n<\/h2>\n

\n Fringed with a coral reef and located in what\u2019s now the Republic of Kiribati, Nikumaroro is roughly 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) long and 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) wide and was uninhabited when Earhart and Noonan made their final flight. The atoll was briefly occupied between 1938 and 1963 when the British colonial administration encouraged people to settle there from the nearby southern Gilbert Islands.\n <\/p>\n

\n The castaway hypothesis draws on the work of Ric Gillespie, the founder of TIGHAR and author of 2024 book \u201cOne More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy.\u201d He has visited Nikumaroro 11 times, turning up possible clues and fragments of evidence.\n <\/p>\n

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\nRick Pettigrew and others believe that wreckage from Earhart’s plane may be found on Nikumaroro, a tiny uninhabited island in the South Pacific.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
spaceimaging.com\/Reuters<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n In Gillespie and Pettigrew\u2019s telling, after failing to find Howland Island, Earhart headed south and landed the Electra on Nikumaroro\u2019s large coral reef, which is exposed at low tide. There, she and Noonan sent distress signals and lived off rainwater and caught fish and turtles for days, perhaps weeks, until they died. Their remains were likely eaten by huge coconut crabs that inhabit the atoll, leaving behind a few bones, some artifacts and the remains of fires.\n <\/p>\n

\n Several lines of evidence support the theory, according to Gillespie and Pettigrew.\n <\/p>\n

\n Radio bearings, or directions, tracked on signals emitted in the wake of the plane\u2019s disappearance appeared to have crossed in the vicinity of Nikumaroro, although it\u2019s not clear or confirmed whether these were really from Earhart.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bones found on Nikumaroro in 1940 were sent to Fiji, where they were assessed by a medical doctor as being male before going missing, Gillespie said. But analysis of the bone\u2019s measurements, which were recorded at the time, using modern forensic software suggests the remains belonged to a woman, and they could be a potential match with Earhart.\n <\/p>\n

\n Artifacts found on the island include a woman\u2019s mirror compact similar to one Earhart was known to carry, a cosmetic jar, a jackknife, and a wooden box that appeared to once contain a sextant, a navigation instrument.\n <\/p>

Read more Tracking measles cases in the United States<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Artifacts<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\nArtifacts 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-apart 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.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
TIGHAR.org<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n Gillespie, however, does not believe the object Ashmore identified in the lagoon is Earhart\u2019s plane. He said he has visited the location in the lagoon where the object is located and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cLooking at the later satellite imagery, something did show up there, but it\u2019s very clearly a tree. Specifically, it\u2019s a pandanus tree,\u201d Gillespie said. \u201cThey grow along the lagoon shore, and it\u2019s not unusual in a big storm for trees to wash in and wash out.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Gillespie still believes Nikumaroro is where Earhart spent her final days but doesn\u2019t think there is anything more to be found on the island.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cEverybody wants the airplane. The airplane is gone,\u201d he noted. \u201cWe think the airplane was washed into the ocean, probably on July 7, best we can calculate, and almost immediately destroyed in the surf, pounded against the reef edge.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n For Pettigrew, however, the Taraia Object is the final puzzle piece that will solve the mystery of Earhart\u2019s disappearance. He said he believes the team will find the aluminum wreckage of her Electra plane.\n <\/p>\n

\n Once on the island, Pettigrew and the team of 14 researchers plan to take video and still images before using sonar and magnetometers to investigate the object. Only then will the researchers begin to excavate using a hydraulic dredge.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think we have a really good chance of delivering an exciting announcement,\u201d Pettigrew said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019ve reviewed this evidence backwards and forwards, over and over,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019ve answered multitudes of questions, I\u2019ve looked at all the objections that people can throw at me, and I have an answer for all of it.It\u2019s very strong.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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\nRick Pettigrew, the executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, speaks at Purdue University, where Earhart once worked.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
John Underwood\/Purdue University<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n In the deep\n<\/h2>\n

\n Dave Jourdan, president of Nauticos, which will focus its search on the deep ocean around Howland Island, doesn\u2019t regard Pettigrew\u2019s expedition as competition in the quest to uncover what happened to Earhart.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey\u2019re barking up a different tree,\u201d Jourdan said. \u201cThe primary data from the Coast Guard, and our radio signal analysis, just does not support that at all.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Three Nauticos expeditions since 2002, 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) \u2014 an area roughly the size of Connecticut. As of late last year, the Nauticos researchers were still trying to raise the $8 million to $10 million necessary to embark on a final expedition.\n <\/p>\n

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\nA receiver and other components identical to the radio system used by Earhart and Noonan have been restored by Nauticos to replicate the communications between Earhart’s plane and the Itasca Coast Guard vessel that was waiting for her on Howland Island.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Nauticos<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"The<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\nThe restored radio system was tested on a plane similar to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Nauticos<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n \u201cIn past searches, we focused on the north, the northwest of the island for many, many reasons \u2026, but we searched it, and she\u2019s not there,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that leaves a couple of other options, and we believe that with one more expedition, we should be able to fill out all of those areas.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Jourdan\u2019s colleagues tracked down and reconstructed the exact make and model of radio used by Earhart and the Itasca vessel, which was waiting for the pilot off the shores of Howland Island.\n <\/p>\n

\n Using the radio in a plane similar in size to the Electra, Nauticos in 2020 recreated the last hours of Earhart\u2019s flight and determined she and Noonan\u2019s approximate location at 8 a.m. on the day they vanished. Jourdan said his team now has the most precise information to date about the duo\u2019s final position before their disappearance.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne of the things that is very telling is on her second to last transmission, she reported hearing the Coast Guard, and that information, along with our knowledge of the frequency she was hearing them on and the equipment she was operating gave us a very solid number of how far she was from the island at that time,\u201d he explained.\n <\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\n The Nauticos team members plan to use four autonomous underwater vehicles to search the seafloor in areas they have identified, Jourdan said. Recent improvements in technology, such as longer battery life and new sonar techniques, will allow the team to cover more ground than in previous expeditions.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe can\u2019t make the ocean transparent, so we still have to go down there to get good, high-quality data, but we can stay there longer and navigate more accurately,\u201d he said. \u201cSharp-edge metal objects tend to be very bright in the sonar, so we are confident that if it\u2019s there, we\u2019ll see it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Earhart, Jourdan said, represents a spirit of adventure and exploration, \u201cof trying your best in spite of the odds, and doing things that other people dare not to do, and doing them as a woman.\u201d Nearly a century after her disappearance, it\u2019s clear that tracking down the renowned aviator\u2019s plane, and her final resting place, is a pursuit that never gets old.\n <\/p>\n

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Robert M. Weiss<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nA doctor was deployed to an Arctic research station during the Cold War. Decades later, he learned its secret purpose<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n Ashmore became captivated by Earhart\u2019s story when he heard it from a teacher in first grade. \u201cIt just stuck with me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like I thought about it every day or anything like that, but I never forgot about it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Even if the upcoming expedition led by Pettigrew determines the object he found while scrolling through his phone during pandemic downtime isn\u2019t Earhart\u2019s plane, Ashmore said he would not give up the search.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou can call this my hobby,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve enjoyed it. \u2026 I\u2019m going to continue. Someone is going to find her.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\nEDITOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/span>\u00a0 This story has been updated with new information about the timing of the Nikumaroro expedition.\n<\/p>\n

\n Sign up for CNN\u2019s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.\n<\/p>

Read more US measles cases reach 35-year high, for second record-breaking year in a row<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two teams are set to explore dramatically different theories about what happened to Amelia Earhart. Each believes it\u2019s closing in on the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archaeology","category-science","category-unearthed"],"yoast_head":"\nAn object in a satellite image defies explanation. 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