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 The next effort to locate the remains of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft will involve two submarines, cost $3 million, and unfold near a coral atoll in the Pacific over 30 days next summer. 
 
 The mission is led by researchers at the University of Hawaii and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR. 
 
 TIGHAR believes that the legendary aviator crashed on the reefs near the Pacific island of Nikumaroro, an island rim shaped like the outline of a foot. Artifacts found on the island — including buttons, bits of rouge and a jar of freckle cream — indicate to the group that Earhart may have stayed on the island as a castaway for at some days after her crash, and died there. 
 
 Earhart's famous Lockheed Electra airplane has never been recovered. Starting in mid-August in 2014, representatives from the Hawaii Undersea Laboratory and TIGHAR will dive to a depth of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) every day for about a month, scouring the reefs around the island for aircraft remains. 
 
 In June, sonar imaging turned up signs of an airplane like the plane that Earhart was flying, near Nikumaroro. 
 
 Earhart last made contact during a flight across the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, on the last leg of a trip around the world. After radioing about running low on gas, both she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared. Since then, Earhart's saga has become the stuff of legend, and even opera. 
 
 Via: Discovery News 
 
 Nidhi Subbaraman writes about science and technology. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. ||||| The anomaly lines up nicely with the object seen in the 1937 Bevington photo and in Jeff Glickman's analysis of the underwater image of the debris field. 
 
 The anomaly appears to be the same size and shape of the Electra. 
 
 A new twist in the search occurred last March when Richard Conroy, a member of TIGHAR's online Amelia Earhart Search Forum, spotted an anomaly in a sonar map posted online. 
 
 TIGHAR postulates that flood tides lifted the Electra and carried it over the reef edge, leaving behind the landing gear, which was inadvertently photographed by Officer Bevington three months later in October 1937. 
 
 The researchers had already identified a small debris field of objects at a depth of 200 feet in the waters of Nikumaroro island, some 300 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island. The site features objects that appear consistent with analysis made by TIGHAR forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman of a grainy 1937 photograph of Nikumaroro's western shoreline by British Colonial Service officer Eric R. Bevington. 
 
 Earhart was piloting the Electra, a two-engine plane, in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator, when she vanished on July 2, 1937. 
 
 A grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the famous aviator's plane, according to The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart's last, fateful flight. 
 
 Submarines will use powerful lights to search a mile-long underwater area down to a depth of more than 3,000 feet. 
 
 The search for Amelia Earhart's long-lost aircraft will resume next year in the waters off Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati where the legendary pilot may have died as a castaway. 
 
 Starting about the middle of August 2014, the 30-day expedition will be carried out by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 76 years ago. 
 
 Called Niku VIII, the new expedition is expected to cost as much as $3 million. It will rely on two Hawaiian Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) manned submersibles, Pisces IV and Pisces V, each carrying a pilot and two TIGHAR observers. 
 
 Play Video The Search For Amelia The search has been going since shortly after she disappeared in 1937. Is it finally over? DCI 
 
 “The plan for Niku VIII is built on the hard data gathered and the hard lessons learned during the previous expeditions carried out in 2010 and 2012,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, said in a statement. 
 
 Equipped with high definition video, still cameras, mechanical arms and recovery baskets, the subs will search a mile-long underwater area down to a depth of more than 3000 feet. 
 
 “Live searching by three people aboard each sub looking at wide vistas illuminated by powerful lights is far superior to searching by looking remotely via the toilet-paper tube view provided by a video camera on an ROV,” Gillespie said. 
 
 The tall, slender, blond pilot mysteriously vanished while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, during a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator. 
 
 The general consensus has been that Earhart's twin-engined Lockheed Electra had run out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere near Howland Island. 
 
 But TIGHAR researchers believe Amelia suffered a different fate. 
 
 In nine archaeological expeditions to Nikumaroro, Gillespie and his team uncovered a number of artifacts which, combined with archival research, provide strong circumstantial evidence for a castaway presence. 
 
 TIGHAR is testing the hypothesis that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan made an emergency landing on the flat coral reef at the western end of Nikumaroro, some 350 miles southeast of their target destination. There, they survived as castaways "for a matter of weeks, possibly more," said Gillespie. 
 
 “She and her navigator Fred Noonan sent radio distress calls from the aircraft for the next five nights before the Electra was washed over the reef edge by rising tides and surf,” Gillespie said. 
 
 The best evidence for where the plane went into the water is a grainy photograph of the island's western shoreline taken by British Colonial Service officer Eric Bevington three months after Amelia's disappearance. 
 
 “The picture appears to show the wreckage of one of the aircraft’s main land gear assemblies on the reef edge,” Gillespie said.
– The search is back on: The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery is returning to the Pacific island of Nikumaroro next year to hunt for wreckage from Amelia Earhart's plane, reports NBC News. TIGHAR has already undertaken several expeditions at the site, where it believes Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan may have lived after landing on the surrounding reef. This time around, TIGHAR is looking for the mysterious "Bevington Object" spotted in a 1937 picture taken by British Colonial Service officer Eric Bevington. TIGHAR thinks the object, first noticed in 2010, might show the landing gear from Earhart's plane's wreckage. The organization will used manned submersibles to go as deep as 3,280 feet, searching an area a mile wide. "Live searching by three people aboard each sub looking at wide vistas illuminated by powerful lights is far superior to searching by looking remotely via the toilet-paper tube view provided by a video camera on an ROV," says TIGHAR's executive director, according to Discovery. During the 30-day Niku VIII expedition, searchers will also look for evidence of a campsite along the shore.