一次前往南太平洋偏远岛屿的探险，旨在寻找阿梅莉亚·埃尔哈特失踪飞机的残骸，但一无所获。
A recent expedition to a remote South Pacific island to search for wreckage from Amelia Earhart’s lost plane has come up empty.
研究人员周一表示，他们未发现“确凿证据”表明这位著名飞行员曾在她不幸航班原定中途停靠点以南的小环礁上或附近降落她的洛克希德10E型选特拉飞机，而该航班发生在近90年前。
Researchers said Monday they found “no conclusive evidence” that the famed aviator landed her Lockheed 10E Electra aircraft on or near the small atoll south of the original pit stop of her ill-fated flight nearly 90 years ago.
前往疑似地点尼库马罗罗岛的远征是由位于俄勒冈州尤金的考古遗产研究所和印第安纳州西拉法叶普渡大学共同领导的联合行动，17名研究人员和技术人员于10月12日抵达该岛。
The trek to the suspected site, Nikumaroro Island, was a joint effort led by the Eugene, Oregon-based Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, with the 17-person team of researchers and technicians arriving on the island on October 12.
主要目标是检查位于潟湖内、2020年首次通过卫星影像发现的一个名为“塔拉亚物体”的模糊物体。远征队队长兼考古学家里克·佩蒂格雷认为，该飞机形状的物体可能是埃尔哈特飞机的残骸。
The main goal was to examine a blurry object known as the Taraia Object in a lagoon first detected in satellite imagery in 2020. Team leader and archaeologist Rick Pettigrew, believed the plane-shaped figure was wreckage from Earhart’s craft.
然而，普渡大学在一份新闻稿中表示，此次远征“未发现确凿证据来证实一个假设，即埃尔哈特飞机的残骸‘位于南太平洋偏远环礁的潟湖中’。”
However, the expedition “found no conclusive evidence to confirm a hypothesis that wreckage” from Earhart’s plane was “in a lagoon on a remote atoll in the South Pacific,” Purdue University said in a news release.
在尼库马罗罗岛收集的证据表明，六年前首次在卫星影像中看到的视觉异常很可能是一堆大树沿半岛沙嘴堆积所致。“当团队到达现场时，碎片的很大一部分已经碎裂并被冲走，”声明称。
Evidence gathered on Nikumaroro confirmed that the visual anomaly first seen in the satellite imagery six years ago was likely a collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula’s sandspit. “By the time the team arrived at the site, a good portion of the debris had fragmented and washed away,” the statement said.
“支持我们来到这里的失踪者假说的证据仍然非常、非常有力，”ALI执行主任佩蒂格鲁在一段视频声明中表示。“我们认为，阿梅莉亚和她的领航员弗雷德·努南很可能确实最终来到了尼库马罗罗岛。”普渡大学总法律顾问兼现场助理史蒂夫·舒尔茨表示，虽然研究人员可能排除了该假说，但它“并未削弱现有的、非常有力、令人信服的失踪者假说。”
“The evidence for the castaway hypothesis, which brought us here, remained very, very strong,” Pettigrew, ALI’s executive director, said in a video statement. “We think that it’s very likely that Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did in fact end up here on Nikumaroro Island.”Steve Schultz, Purdue general counsel and field assistant, said while researchers could rule out the hypothesis, it “doesn’t detract from the existing, very strong, compelling case for the castaway hypothesis.”
埃尔哈特和努南于1937年7月2日在一次大胆尝试中失踪，试图成为首位环球飞行的女性。这对搭档最后一次被看到是在新几内亚的拉埃起飞，当时他们预计要进行一次艰苦的18小时旅程，前往太平洋上的小岛——豪兰岛。
Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, during a bold attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world. The pair were last seen taking off from Lae, New Guinea, on what was expected to be a grueling 18-hour journey to Howland Island, a tiny speck of land in the Pacific Ocean.
埃尔哈特的失踪或许是航空史上最引人入胜的谜团之一，数十年来，历史学家和研究人员一直在争论她究竟是如何以及在何处失踪的。
Earhart’s disappearance is perhaps the most captivating mystery in aviation history, and for decades historians and researchers have debated how and where she went missing.
主流观点——也是美国政府主导的大规模搜救行动在她失踪后立即进行后得出的官方结论——认为埃尔哈特和努南因燃料耗尽而导致他们的Electra飞机坠入了太平洋，接近他们预定的目的地。
The main school of thought — and the official determination of the massive US government-led search held immediately after her disappearance — suggests that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and their Electra crashed into the Pacific near their intended destination.
另一些人，如最新探险队的领导者，则怀疑埃尔哈特和努南将飞机降落在豪兰岛以南约400英里（644公里）处——即尼库马罗罗岛上或附近——并成为失踪者，直至他们很可能因口渴或饥饿而逝世。
Others, such as the leaders of the latest expedition, suspect that Earhart and Noonan landed their plane 400 miles (644 kilometers) to the south of Howland — on or near Nikumaroro Island — and became castaways until they likely perished from thirst or hunger.
多次寻找埃尔哈特飞机的尝试，包括对尼库马罗罗岛的其他搜索，均未发现任何新线索。
Repeated efforts to find Earhart’s plane, including other searches around Nikumaroro, haven’t been able to turn up anything new.
“尼库马罗罗岛已经被搜索了超过15次，但一无所获，”华盛顿特区史密森尼国家航空航天博物馆退休策展人、埃尔哈特专家多萝西·科克伦表示。“他们是许多未能在尼库马罗罗岛发现Electra飞机、阿梅莉亚或努南的确凿证据的人之一，”她说道，指的是最近的这次探险。
“Nikumaroro Island has been searched more than 15 times, to no avail,” said Dorothy Cochrane, an Earhart expert and retired curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. “They are one of many who have not found bona fide evidence of the Electra or Amelia or Noonan at Nikumaroro,” she said, referring to the most recent expedition.
2024年，海洋探索公司Deep Sea Vision在声呐图像中检测到豪兰岛以西约100英里（160公里）海域出现类似飞机的形状，但该形状最终被证实为岩石。由海洋学家鲍勃·巴拉德领导的2019年尼库马罗罗探险队也以失望告终，巴拉德曾在1985年发现泰坦尼克号。
In 2024, ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision detected on sonar imagery a plane-like shape in the ocean about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away from Howland, but the figure turned out to be rocks. A 2019 expedition to Nikumaroro led by oceanographer Bob Ballard, who found the Titanic in 1985, also ended in disappointment.
此次最新搜索的美国研究人员表示，他们使用磁力计对尼库马罗罗潟湖进行了勘测，磁力计能够探测铁，并利用声呐技术在潟湖底沉积物下搜索物体。
The American researchers of this latest search said they surveyed Nikumaroro’s lagoon with a magnetometer, which detects iron, and used sonar technology to search for objects under the sediment on the lagoon bed.
“我们实现了主要目标，也就是来到这里检验这一假设，”佩蒂格鲁在视频声明中说道。
“We accomplished our main goal, which was to come here and test that hypothesis,” Pettigrew said in the video statement.
尼库马罗罗如今是基里巴斯共和国的一部分，是南太平洋一个无人居住的、被珊瑚礁环绕的岛屿，栖息着巨大的椰子蟹。该岛极其偏远，团队从基里巴斯首都塔拉瓦乘船前往用了五天时间。
Nikumaroro, which is today part of the Republic of Kiribati, is an uninhabited coral reef-fringed island in the South Pacific that is home to huge coconut crabs. The island is so remote it took the team five days to reach it by sea from Tarawa, Kiribati’s capital.
普渡大学研究基金会最初资助了埃尔哈特的洛克希德Electra飞机，埃尔哈特计划在完成历史性飞行后将飞机归还给普渡大学，大学在新闻稿中如此表示。
The Purdue Research Foundation originally funded Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, and Earhart intended for the plane to be returned to Purdue upon completion of her historic flight, the university, said in a news release.
埃尔哈特在失踪时正接近实现她的目标。她当时已经飞行了22,000英里（35,405公里），尚有7,000英里（11,265公里）未完成。普渡大学寻找埃尔哈特飞机的行动不太可能是最后一次。
Earhart was close to achieving her goal when she went missing. She had already flown 22,000 miles (35,405 kilometers) when she was last seen, and she had 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers) left to travel. The Purdue search for Earhart’s plane is unlikely to be the last.
深海探索公司Nauticos正在努力筹集800万至1000万美元，以资助他们希望成为最终一次的探险——在豪兰岛周边海域进行搜索，搜索区域通过使用埃尔哈特无线电系统复制品的实验所获得的新信息而被缩小。该公司自2002年以来已经在这座岛屿附近完成了三次搜索。
Deep sea exploration company Nauticos is trying to raise the $8 million to $10 million necessary to fund what they hope will be a final expedition to the ocean around Howland Island, exploring a search area narrowed by new information from experiments using a replica of Earhart’s radio system. The company has already completed three searches near the island since 2002.