The search for Amelia Earhart will resume this summer in the waters off Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati where the legendary pilot might have died as a castaway. 
 
 With support from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the US State Department and Discovery Channel which will be documenting the expedition for a television special later this year, the expedition will be carried out by the The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 75 years ago. 
 
 The new expedition will use high tech underwater equipment to search for pieces of Earhart's plane. 
 
 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. 
 
 Secretary Clinton met today with historians and scientists from TIGHAR and spoke about why the search for Earhart is still pertinent to Americans. She pointed out that when Earhart went missing, the nation was in the grips of the Great Depression." 
 
 "Now Amelia Earhart may have been an unlikely heroine for a nation down on its luck, but she embodied the spirit of an America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world," Clinton said. 
 
 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 according to Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director, there is an alternative scenario. 
 
 PHOTOS: Amelia Earhart 
 
 "The navigation line Amelia described in her final in-flight radio transmission passed through not only Howland Island, her intended destination, but also Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro," Gillespie said. 
 
 The possibility that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan might have made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro's flat coral reef, some 300 miles southeast of their target destination, is not a new theory. 
 
 "This was the oldest Earhart theory," Gillespie said. "This was the theory the Navy came up with in the first days following the flight's disappearance. And they did search the atoll, but only from the air," Gillespie said. 
 
 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. 
 
 PHOTOS: Clues Point to Amelia Earhart as Castaway 
 
 "We found archival records describing the discovering in Nikumaroro in 1940 of the partial skeleton and campsite of what appears to have been a female castaway," he said. 
 
 "We identified the place on a remote corner of the atoll that fits the description of where the bones and campsite were found. Archaeological digs there have produced artifacts that speak of an American woman of the 1930s," Gillespie said. 
 
 He added that evidence on the island would also suggest that Earhart survived as a castaway "for a matter of weeks, possibly more." 
 
 In the forthcoming expedition, Gillespie and his team will be concentrating on Earhart's plane. The underwater search will be carried by Phoenix International, the U.S. Navy's primary deep ocean search and recovery contractor. 
 
 On July 2, the 75th anniversary of Earhart's disappearance, the TIGHAR team will sail from Honolulu aboard the University of Hawaii oceanographic research ship R/V Ka Imikai-O-Kanaloa. 
 
 "When we get there, in about eight days, we'll survey the general area with multi-beam sonar to create an accurate map of the undersea topography and prioritize the search area," Gillespie told Discovery News. 
 
 "Targets will be identified using high resolution, side scan sonar mounted on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Finally, we will investigate suspicious looking targets using a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) with dual manipulators and color video camera system and lights," Gillespie said. 
 
 NEWS: Signs of Amelia Earhart's Final Days? 
 
 The search relies on what Gillespie called "the most exciting breakthrough" -- a photograph of the island's western shoreline taken three months after Amelia's disappearance. 
 
 "It shows an unexplained object protruding from the water on the fringing reef," Gillespie said. 
 
 Forensic imaging analyses of the photo suggest that the shape and dimension of the object are consistent with the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra. Gillespie said they have reason to believe that Earhart's airplane went over the reef edge near the spot where the object appears in the photo. 
 
 "Amelia Earhart's legacy still lives today, reminding young people to keep their eyes on the stars," Clinton told reporters. 
 
 Gillespie said they hope to solve the long-standing mystery about just what happened to one of the nation's most inspiring heroes. 
 
 "We'll do our best to find Amelia. During the painful recovery from the Great Depression, Amelia Earhart inspired America with her courage and determination. America needs Amelia again," Gillespie said. ||||| Getty Images Amelia Earhart in 1928 with her biplane 'Friendship.' She disappeared in another plane in 1937. 
 
 What became of Amelia Earhart's plane when it disappeared over the Pacific 75 years ago has long intrigued aviation fans. On Tuesday, U.S. government officials and a private historical group announced a new effort to locate the famed aviator's twin-engine Lockheed. 
 
 The effort, projected to kick off in July, will be financed with roughly half a million dollars in private funds, according to people familiar with the details. It will focus on a remote Pacific atoll called Nikumaroro, halfway between Hawaii and Australia, near where the plane carrying Ms. Earhart and a companion may have gone down during an attempted around-the-world flight. 
 
 A search team will concentrate on the deep waters near Nikumaroro, which was the site of a 2010 search that focused on coral reefs and nearby shallow waters, these people said. 
 
 WSJ's Andy Pasztor reports on new efforts to locate Amelia Earhart's airplane, which disappeared in the South Pacific in 1937. AP Photo. 
 
 The impetus for the latest expedition is a recently discovered photo, apparently taken near Nikumaroro just months after Ms. Earhart's disappearance. Some experts believe it may show a portion of the plane's landing gear. 
 
 State Department officials held a hastily arranged briefing Monday night to describe the photo. After "very intense photo analysis" by government and outside experts, according to one senior official, "the judgment is that it's worth exploring." 
 
 The official added that "a very healthy dose of skepticism has to be in play." 
 
 The search will be spearheaded again by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has championed the theory that the renowned female aviator and Fred Noonan, the other crew member on the July 1937 flight, ended up on or near the west coast of the island, formerly called Gardner Island. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close TIGHAR/Associated Press Researchers for the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery found bone fragments on Nikumaroro Island during a 2010 mission. 
 
 Aviation experts aren't unanimous in believing that scenario. Some longtime Earhart theorists are convinced that bad weather caused the plane to run out of fuel and forced a ditching in the ocean. Officials from the private recovery team declined to comment about specifically where they intend to look and who is financing the expedition. 
 
 At a event Tuesday in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined scientist to unveil details of the new expedition, which will include small robotic submarines. Ric Gillespie, head of the search group, said "there are some very smart people who think we're wrong about this," but other experts who believe the new search may hit pay dirt. 
 
 Since the island is now part of the Republic of Kiribati, State Department officials have helped pave the way for an underwater search. 
 
 Officials at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum also have been briefed. A museum official on Monday declined to provide details, except to say "we have no formal partnership" with the search but "support any general effort" to unravel the mystery. 
 
 Continuing fascination with the crash has spawned numerous Web sites, far-out explanations and various conspiracy theories. 
 
 Ms. Earhart's plane was on one leg a record-setting global trip but disappeared before reaching Howland Island, which the U.S. Navy had outfitted with a landing strip, fuel supplies, a radio transmitter and support personnel. 
 
 Her final frantic radio transmissions to the crew of a Coast Guard cutter, possibly advising them she and Mr. Noonan were lost, added to the mystery. 
 
 Ms. Earhart became world-famous in the early 1930s, when she set numerous aviation records in a bright red Lockheed Vega she called her "little red bus." She became a sensation as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, as well as nonstop across the U.S. 
 
 Searching for Amelia's Plane View Slideshow Associated Press A crowd cheered for Amelia Earhart as she boarded her plane in Northern Ireland in 1932. 
 
 When her plane disappeared over the Pacific, the U.S. government spent some $4 million searching an area roughly the size of Texas but found nothing. 
 
 The abiding interest in the crash has been fueled partly intriguing but inconclusive results from previous searches. The head of the historic airplane group gained some credibility after searches around Nikumaroro turned up an aluminum panel and a piece of curved glass that might have come from Ms. Earhart's plane. Teams also came upon a heel from a woman's shoe, which some believe resembled Ms. Earhart's footwear. 
 
 In 1940, three years after her disappearance, the historic aircraft group's website states, a British official "found a partial skeleton of a castaway on a remote part of the island," along with evidence of a "campfire, animal bones, a box that had once contained a sextant" and remnants of a man's and a woman's shoes. U.S. authorities never were notified so they could test the remains, according to the group. 
 
 But some scholars and aviation experts challenge the historic group's assertion that the crew managed to land on Nikumaroro and survive on theuninhabited atoll for some time. 
 
 On Monday, State Department officials didn't endorse a particular theory. "It's a hotly contested area," a department official said at the briefing. "We're not making any bets." 
 
 Nonetheless, participation by Secretary Clinton and other dignitaries suggests the photo has changed the debate. Along with representatives of the search team, renowned undersea explorer Robert Ballard is expected to express his support for the new effort. Mr. Ballard has spent decades recovering relics and finding wrecks, including the passenger liner Titanic, the German battleship Bismarck and President John F. Kennedy's PT-109 patrol boat. 
 
 The State Department said it is "working closely" with Mr. Ballard in what will be a sophisticated sonar search. 
 
 Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com
– Some 75 years after Amelia Earhart and her navigator disappeared over the South Pacific in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe, the State Department is backing another search for her and her plane. The new search, to be launched this summer, will focus on deep waters around the remote atoll of Nikumaroro. A newly discovered photo taken just months after her disappearance in 1937 shows what some believe is part of her plane's landing gear, the Wall Street Journal reports. Hillary Clinton will discuss the search today, and praise Earhart, the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo, as a pioneer for women and a model of American courage, according to State Department officials. The remains of a castaway were found on the island a few years after Earhart disappeared, but DNA testing last year proved inconclusive. The new search is being funded with $500,000 of private money. The search team plans to set off from Hawaii on July 2, exactly 75 years after Earhart's last transmission. "We'll do our best to find Amelia," the search team's leader tells Discovery. "During the painful recovery from the Great Depression, Amelia Earhart inspired America with her courage and determination. America needs Amelia again."