This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.

Amelia Earhart’s disappearance in the summer of 1937 has remained one of aviation’s greatest mysteries for nearly 90 years. Since then, explorers and researchers have searched land, reef, lagoon, and deep ocean for any trace of the plane she flew with navigator Fred Noonan.

One team has spent years looking west of Howland Island. Its newest lead comes from a strange place for a deep-ocean search: the airwaves.

In 2020, the deep-sea exploration and historical research organization Nauticos procured and restored a radio system identical to the one that Earhart and Noonan used on their final flight: a Western Electric 13C aircraft transmitter and Bendix Model RA-1A aircraft receiver.

In 2025, Nauticos announced that after a series of tests using that restored radio system, its researchers had estimated the approximate position of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra L-10E around 8 a.m. on the day she and Noonan disappeared.

Armed with the new data, Nauticos says its next expedition will focus on a smaller search area than its earlier attempts. In a 2025 press release, Nauticos President Dave Jourdan said the team had “narrowed the search area dramatically” and called the planned mission its “best chance yet” to locate Earhart’s plane.

That expedition, however, remains the next step—not the answer. In a February 27, 2026, WBUR interview, Jourdan said Nauticos had worked out roughly where Earhart was around 8 a.m., but the location hadn’t been publicly shared. He also said the group was raising $6 million to $10 million and hoped to mount the expedition as early as 2026.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea en route to Howland Island. They were receiving communications from a vessel off the shore of Howland, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca. But radio reception was poor; the radio log from that fateful day indicates that at 7:42 a.m., Earhart told Itasca, “We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.”

The Itasca tried to reach the Electra L-10E, but every attempt failed; if Earhart or Noonan heard those messages, the records show no sign of it.

Around 8 a.m., Earhart reported that she needed bearings. The Itasca was sending navigation signals, but she wasn’t receiving them clearly enough to fix her position. At 8:43 a.m., she radioed the Itasca again, saying the Electra was “on line 157-337 and running north and south,” a reference to degrees on a compass. That line runs between 157 degrees (southeast-to-south) and 337 degrees (northwest-to-north). It was her final transmission. Neither she nor Noonan were ever heard from again.

Earhart gave the Itasca a compass position—likely thanks to Noonan aligning their course with the rising sun—but she couldn’t provide exact coordinates. That’s why Nauticos’ radio experiment could prove crucial.

As of June 2026, Nauticos has not publicly released the exact coordinates or search box it says the analysis produced.

Nauticos’ tests used two vessels: one in the air and one on the water. Aboard the aircraft—a stand-in for the lost Electra fittingly named Miss Amelia—they carried a Bendix receiver and a Western Electric transmitter. On the water, their boat Nellie Crocket had its mast extended to match the antenna height of the Itasca, and carried an RCA Model CGR-32-1 receiver, the same model used on the Itasca.

The researchers used this equipment to run Radio Direction Finding (RDF) and Range vs. Signal Strength tests on the 3105 kHz frequency, replicating the conditions of Earhart’s final flight as closely as possible. They compiled and analyzed the results into an 88-page report titled Statistical Analysis for Highest Probability Areas.

The researchers’ radio-informed expedition would not be their first. Nauticos first gained attention in the 1990s for helping discover the I-52 Japanese World War II submarine and has since mounted three Earhart expeditions, in 2002, 2006, and 2017.

On the 2006 expedition, the team came up empty, with nothing more than scrap cables. But every search added to Nauticos’ stockpile of data. Now, with radio-based location estimates in hand, the researchers believe they could finally crack the Earhart mystery once and for all.