In a few weeks, a team of archaeologists is set to launch an ambitious mission to recover the aircraft of the legendary pilot Amelia Earhart, with an optimistic 90% chance of success.

Leading the expedition is archaeologist Richard Pettigrew, who, along with a team of 14 experts, will depart on November 4 heading to the remote island of Nikumaroro.

Pettigrew is convinced that Earhart, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, crash-landed on this isolated island during her historic attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.

Earhart’s disappearance occurred on July 2, 1937, as she piloted her Lockheed Electra 10E with Noonan. Their last known location was near Howland Island, where they vanished during a challenging 2,556-mile leg of their journey.

Their intended destination, Howland Island, lay approximately 400 miles away from Nikumaroro, the island Pettigrew and his team now believe holds the key to uncovering this enduring aviation mystery.

Despite decades of researchers trying and failing to uncover what happened to Earhart, Pettigrew thinks that parts of her aircraft may have survived. 

And he’s confident that his team will be able to recover them. 

A mysterious object off coast of the five-mile-long island in the western Pacific Ocean could be the key to Earhart’s mysterious disappearance.

‘We have a lot of evidence to go on, and I believe the chances are 9 out of 10 that it’s Amelia’s plane, but we won’t know until we go in there and take a look at it,’ said archeologist Pettigrew told the Baltimore Sun.

They will investigate the ‘Taraia Object’, a ‘visual anomaly’ in a lagoon on Nikumaroro that they think could be Earhart’s missing

Richard Pettigrew (pictured) will lead a team of experts hoping to recover the lost pilot’s plane

Amelia Earhart went missing while trying to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight around the globe

Satellite imagery revealed the long, suspiciously plane-shaped item after a historic cyclone swamped the area in 2015. 

Pettigrew said the storm swept the plane into visibility, clearing enough sediment to make it visible in the satellite images in 2020. 

Promisingly, the Taraia Object was later confirmed to be visible on aerial photos taken of the island’s lagoon as far back as 1938, the year after the tragedy. 

Pettigrew told the Baltimore Sun that he theorized Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan died as castaways just short of their final destination.

He thinks the two of them survived on the island for at least a week before succumbing to the elements. 

Expedition members plan to depart Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 for the Marshall Islands, about 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii. On Nov. 4, they will sail the 1,200 miles in six days to Nikumaroro.

Pettigrew and his team believe that a mysterious object on Nikumaroro Island could be the missing aircraft

The object, referred to as the ‘Taraia object’ first became visible on satellite imagery after a rare cyclone 

Earhart was supposed to end her 2,556 journey at Howard Island

The team will spend five days there using sensing technology to get a photographic record of the site. 

If their remote technology can confirm that it’s Earhart’s plane, they’ll return later for a full excavation.

The Trump administration ordered the declassification of any FBI files that mentioned Earhart in September, but experts said it revealed little new information. 

Fortunately for Pettigrew any newly unveiled documents do little to disprove or prove any working theories. 

Despite Pettigrew’s optimism, other Earhart enthusiasts are not so confident.

Some theories suggest that they ran out of fuel and got swept to sea, with the plane chewed to pieces by the current. 

Documentary film maker and Earhart enthusiast Laurie Gwen Shapiro told the Baltimore Sun, ‘I’m telling you now — there’s no plane in that lagoon.’

Through decades of expeditions, analyses of satellite images, and inspections of debris, for Pettigrew the Nikumaroro Hypothesis is alive and well.

‘With the information we have in front of us right now, we have to go there and look,” said Pettigrew. ‘I know that without any doubt.’