3 Jul 2012

New search for Amelia Earhart

8:27 pm on 3 July 2012

An expedition to find out what happened to US pilot Amelia Earhart is setting out from Hawaii, 75 years after she took off on her last flight.

Researchers will dive around the uninhabited Pacific island of Nikumaroro looking for clues, the BBC reports.

Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, a feat she performed in 1932.

On 3 July 1937 she and her navigator Fred Noonan took off from Papua New Guinea in an Electra 10E aircraft, en route to Howland Island.

They were never seen again. Many experts think a navigational error caused the plane to run out of fuel over the sea.