The next effort to locate the remains of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft will involve two submarines, cost $3 million, and unfold near a coral atoll in the Pacific over 30 days next summer.
The mission is led by researchers at the University of Hawaii and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR.
TIGHAR believes that the legendary aviator crashed on the reefs near the Pacific island of Nikumaroro, an island rim shaped like the outline of a foot. Artifacts found on the island — including buttons, bits of rouge and a jar of freckle cream — indicate to the group that Earhart may have stayed on the island as a castaway for at some days after her crash, and died there.
Earhart's famous Lockheed Electra airplane has never been recovered. Starting in mid-August in 2014, representatives from the Hawaii Undersea Laboratory and TIGHAR will dive to a depth of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) every day for about a month, scouring the reefs around the island for aircraft remains.
In June, sonar imaging turned up signs of an airplane like the plane that Earhart was flying, near Nikumaroro.
Earhart last made contact during a flight across the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, on the last leg of a trip around the world. After radioing about running low on gas, both she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared. Since then, Earhart's saga has become the stuff of legend, and even opera.
Via: Discovery News
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about science and technology. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
