The Taraia Object Expedition, a team including the Purdue Research Foundation and the Archaeological Legacy Institute, announced Friday a plan to visit an object they believe could be Amelia Earhart’s lost aircraft.

PRF and ALI will travel in October to Nikumaroro Island to investigate the Taraia object, which they suspect to be a remnant of the groundbreaking pilot’s Lockheed Electra plane. Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She was attempting to fly around the world when she disappeared in 1937.

Earhart was also a former Purdue career counselor who would have celebrated her 129th birthday today.

Kelly Hiller, Chief Marketing Officer at Purdue, made the announcement on a YouTube livestream. Purdue announced the expedition last year but needed permission from a foreign government.

“Today, we can confirm that the cabinet of the government of Kiribati has approved the Taraia Object Expedition, which is officially moving forward with plans to depart the first week of October,” Hiller said.

The expedition will be led by ALI’s executive director Rick Pettigrew.

Pettigrew offered context as to what the Taraia object is.

“It's a thing that we see from satellite imagery and in other imagery that we've found that simply shouldn't be there,” Pettigrew said. “It's not a natural object. It's clearly a human-made object.”

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Man-made and washed up in a lagoon are just two pieces of the puzzle.

Pettigrew said visual appearance and location of the object provided a strong indication that it could have belonged to the Electra plane.

“It seems very possible, in fact, even possibly likely that this is wreckage from the Electra aircraft that was flown there by Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” Pettigrew said.

Nikumaroro Island has long been a place of interest in the search for answers to Earhart’s disappearance.

Thirteen bones identified as human remains were discovered on the island in 1940 during a British colonial expedition and taken to Fiji for further examination. The bones were lost, but reports from the time are consistent with Earhart’s measurements.

Suspicion, however, is not enough to put to rest the lore of Earhart’s disappearance.

Pettigrew stressed that was the reason for the expedition.

“Of course, we can't be sure about that without going there and looking at it,” Pettigrew said. “So, we have to go there and look at it. That's the whole idea.”

Steve Schultz, vice president and general counsel for Purdue and the Purdue Research Foundation, was also a part of the announcement.

Schultz spoke on Earhart’s legacy at the university.

“Well, she's one of our own,” he said. “The things that she did, the things that she dared to do, so embody the Boilermaker spirit.”