![\"Meredith](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ceed934a-4a4b-487e-b430-796ce9f0c4d9_1739564660.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor nearly 90 years, the world has wondered what happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan. <\/p>\n
Now a team of 17 will fly across the world to see if this image is Earhart’s plane. <\/p>\n
“We have to identify it,” said archeologist Rick Pettigrew. “We have to confirm the hypothesis that it is, in fact, the wreckage of the Electra aircraft.”<\/p>\n
Pettigrew is on a mission to find the wreckage.<\/p>\n
“Well, there’s something in the lagoon that shouldn’t be there, and we see this in satellite imagery,” he said. <\/p>\n
This satellite photo was snapped in 2015, after a huge tropical storm shifted the sand, potentially revealing the plane. <\/p>\n
Pettigrew brought the image to Purdue University, where Earhart once taught, and which provided her famous Lockheed 10E Electra. <\/p>\n
Pettigrew will lead the expedition, which departs Saturday. <\/p>\n
One Central Florida man and Purdue alum is a part of this mission. <\/p>\n
Marc Hagle will one of the scuba divers.<\/p>\n
“I am actually going to be going down in the water and be one of the first people to touch it,” he said on a recent visit to WESH 2. <\/p>\n
“If we find it \u2013 oh my gosh, look at what we have done.<\/p>\n
“If we don’t find it \u2013 it is still a mission of Purdue University to investigate \u2013 take it to the end of the road and know the answer,” Hagle said. <\/p>\n
They will fly to Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific, travel by boat for six days and then cut their way through the jungle to find the lagoon. <\/p>\n
The experts think this is where Earhart radioed for help. <\/p>\n
“The airplane probably landed on the coral reef,” Hagle said. “There were 5 broadcasts, and if you triangulate, they come to this point.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Central Florida man joins mission to find Amelia Earhart wreckage For nearly 90 years, the world has wondered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[165150,1890,35371,165149,28,30,29,29717,91535,160710,17649,165148,10258,165151,35418,107,918,1740],"class_list":["post-417184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-amelia-earhart-wreckage","tag-boat","tag-central-florida-man","tag-earhart","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-image","tag-lagoon","tag-marc-hagle","tag-mission","tag-pettigrew","tag-plane","tag-purdue-alum","tag-purdue-university","tag-travel","tag-wesh","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}