Search for Amelia Earhart's 'long-lost' aircraft set to resume next year

The search for pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart's long-lost aircraft is going to resume next year in the waters off Nikumaroro - an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati - where she may have died as a castaway.

The 30-day expedition will start in the middle of August 2014, and will be carried out by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), Fox News reported.

The expedition named Niku VIII, is expected to cost about 3-million-dollars and will be relying on two Hawaiian Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) manned submersibles, Pisces IV and Pisces V, each carrying a pilot and two TIGHAR observers.

The subs are equipped with high definition video, still cameras, mechanical arms and recovery baskets, and will search a mile-long underwater area down to a depth of more than 3000 feet.

Earhart mysteriously disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, while attempting to fly around the world at the equator.