Team Reaches Remote Island for Earhart Search

Aviation's biggest mystery just got a fresh set of boots on the ground. A research team from Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute has landed on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific they suspect might be where Amelia Earhart's plane ended up in 1937, reports NBC News. The group is headed for a lagoon where satellite imagery revealed an underwater "anomaly" that could be her Lockheed Electra.

Nikumaroro lies near the area of Earhart's final radio calls, when she reported cloudy skies, trouble locating a Coast Guard ship, and dwindling fuel before going silent with navigator Fred Noonan, per USA Today. Past digs have turned up 1930s-era glass and a woman's cosmetic compact. The team expects about three weeks of on-site work, which includes hacking through dense vegetation by day and retreating to their boat at night to avoid the island's large land crabs.