Amelia Earhart was the first woman and only the second person in history to fly solo across the Atlantic. Inspiring generations of women to break through gender barriers, her final attempt at the annals of history was by being the first woman to successfully fly around the world.
On July 2, 1937, however, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. They were just 7,000 miles from completing their circuit of the globe, but were never seen or heard from again. Their fates remain a mystery to this day.
Researchers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) announced last month that they may have found evidence of wreckage from the ill-fated flight not far from Howland Island in the mid-Pacific, where Earhart and Noonan were trying to land.
According to a report from technology blog Mashable, the researchers used an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) designed by Bluefin Robotics and a Submersible Systems, Inc. remote-controlled TRV 005 to capture images of what appear to be consistent with landing gear from Earhart's twin engine Lockheed Electra.
Technology used in bonding dissimilar metals as well as the assembly of sensor housing makes submersible robotic devices like these possible. Such innovations may one day soon lead to the uncovering of one of the greatest mysteries of the last century.
Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director, told The Los Angeles Times that he dreams of one day being able to recover the remnants of Earhart's plane and corroborate the belief that man-made objects found on Howland Island in fact belonged to her and Noonan. The items found on the island, according to Gillespie, show "their attempts to boil water … to make a spear, the evidence of a castaway trying to survive."
Whether or not Gillespie has found the actual wreckage, fans of the famous JJ Abrams TV series "Lost" are likely to draw some comparisons between the eerie fictional island and the mystery that shrouds Earhart's disappearance. But, perhaps modern science is poised to finally offer some answers.