The Guy Who Found the Titanic Is Now Looking for Amelia Earhart's Plane
Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic and John F. Kennedy's WWII patrol boat, is on a new mission: finding Amelia Earhart's plane.
Ballard will be aided by Fredrik Hiebert, an archeologist from National Geographic, and the search process will be filmed for a NatGeo special set to premiere this October.
Robert Ballard, the deep-sea explorer responsible for finding the Titanic in 1985, has announced that his next mission will be searching for Amelia Earhart's downed Lockheed Electra. Ballard will lead a team into the Pacific to find out what really happened to Earhart's plane once and for all.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart was set to complete her expedition around the world with just one flight left when she disappeared along with her navigator, Fred Noonan. No one was ever able to figure out what happened to the pair, although speculation continues to run rampant.
Earhart, an American pilot, was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, a feat that earned her the United States Distinguished Flying Cross. Earhart was also the first person ever to make a solo flight from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland. Not one to shy away from a challenge, on March 13, 1937, Earhart embarked on a journey that would see her fly around the world.
Sadly, Earhart never got to complete her mission. She was declared to have been lost at sea, although no remains or wreckage from the presumed crash have ever been found. That's where Ballard comes in.
On August 7, the oceanographer is set to depart from Samoa, where he'll head toward the Nikumaroro atoll, part of the island country of Kiribati, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.
Ballard will work with National Geographic archeologist Fredrik Hiebert on a month-long quest to find Earhart's plane. Hiebert's expertise may even help find Earhart's bones if she did indeed die in the area.
The team will use various types of tech in the search, including "remotely operated underwater vehicles and autonomous surface vessels," per the The Wrap. NatGeo will film the journey for a special that will air on the network October 20.
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