AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2012 - 48

BRIEFING

WOMEN IN AVIATION

Earhart search returns ‘with more questions than answers’ B Y J I L L W. TA L L M A N
ON WHAT WOULD have been Amelia Earhart’s 115th birthday, the expedition—launched in July to investigate possible new evidence of her missing Lockheed Model 10 Electra—returned to Hawaii without conclusive evidence. The nonprofit International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) announced in March that it planned to conduct extensive deep-water search operations near an uninhabited atoll called Nikumaroro. The aviatrix and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in July 1937 while trying to locate Howland Island on Earhart’s now-infamous attempt to circumnavigate the globe. TIGHAR has spent 24 years investigating Earhart’s disappearance. “We’re coming home with more questions than answers,” TIGHAR stated July 23. “We are disappointed that we did not make a dramatic and conclusive discovery, but we are undaunted in our commitment to keep searching.” The group has volumes of sonar data and many hours of high-definition video to review and analyze before it can be known whether evidence was found. “Due to the limitations of the technology, we were only able to see standard-definition video images during actual search operations,” TIGHAR said. “Now that we’re examining the recorded high-definition video, we’re already seeing objects we want our forensic imaging specialist, Jeff Glickman, to look at.” The new effort stemmed from a clue spotted in an original negative of a photo of the western shoreline of

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Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner Island). The negative showed a protrusion from a reef resembling the landing gear of an aircraft. TIGHAR said “big pieces of airplane wreckage were not immediately apparent, but after 75 years in Nikumaroro’s severe and unstable underwater environment, that is hardly surprising.” The Discovery Channel planned to air a show on the expedition August 19.
EMAIL jill.tallman@aopa.org

OBITUARY
NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE ARCHIVES, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

ASTRONAUT FLIES WEST
As a physicist, engineer, astronaut, and educator, Sally Kristen Ride blazed a trail and became an icon as the first American woman to fly in space. Ride lost her 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer July 23. She was 61. Ride was one of six women chosen in 1978 for the first coed class of astronaut trainees, and later recalled that the June 18, 1983, flight aboard the Space
48 | AOPA PILOT September 2012

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Shuttle Challenger was a mission that carried extraordinary expectations that were difficult to appreciate at the time. “On launch day, there was so much excitement and so much happening around us in crew quarters, even on the way to the launch pad,” Ride said. “I didn’t really think about it that much at the time, but I came to appreciate what an honor it was to be selected to be the first to get a chance to go into space.”

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2012