The mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart's sudden disapperance over the Pacific is still something that leaves us dumbfounded. We can only speculate what must have happened to the first female aviator to cross the Atlantic solo, when she and her navigator Fred Noonan went missing.
But now, the former Navy officer Robert Ballard who is known for his discoveries on the wrecks of the battleship Bismarck, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and RMS Titanic, will investigate on the whereabouts of Amelia Earhart's wreckage and hopefully make clear the details of what happened once and for all.
Following decades of speculation by TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), Ballard and his futuristic ship the E/V Nautilus have made for Nikumaroro, an island in the Western Pacific.
Why there? National Geographic – who provided funding – reports on Dr. Ballard’s mission, writing that “At the time of Earhart’s disappearance, the tide on Nikumaroro was especially low, revealing a reef surface along the shore long and flat enough for a plane to land.”
(Image credit: Los Angeles Daily News/UCLA Library; Wikimedia Commons)