In the decades since American aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished while attempting the first flight around the world, numerous theories about their disappearance have emerged. One posits that the pair landed on the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro in the Western Pacific, then became marooned when the tide swept up their plane and dashed it against the rocky shoreline.

The evidence is certainly compelling. A 2018 analysis of human bones found on the island determined that they were 99% more likely to be from Earhart than other individuals. Experts have also speculated that 1930s artifacts discovered on Nikumaroro belonged to Noonan and Earhart. Then, in 2020, an amateur researcher spotted a plane-like shape while browsing satellite images of the island on Apple Maps. That visual anomaly later came to be known as the Taraia Object.

Now, Purdue University has announced that a team of 17 expeditioners, supported by a 17-person boat crew, has arrived at Nikumaroro to investigate whether the Taraia Object could be Earhart and Noonan’s Lockheed Electra 10E airplane. Over the next five days, they plan to use a combination of archaeological techniques, sonar technologies, and even a water induction dredge to thoroughly inspect the submerged structure, located on the edge of a peninsula in the island’s lagoon.

“It is incredibly rewarding to be this close to completing our inspection of the Taraia Object and potentially solving, at long last, the outstanding mystery of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan more than 89 years ago,” Rick Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute and leader of the expedition, said in a statement.

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