Catherine Margaret Corrigan (born 1972), often known as Cari Corrigan, is an American scientist best known as a curator of the

meteorite A meteorite is a rock (geology), rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical ...

collection at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

. She is a scientist in the Department of Mineral Science at the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 ...

Education

Corrigan obtained a Bachelor of Science in 1995 and a Master of Science in 1998, both in Geology at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

. Her master's thesis was titled ''The Composition of Impact Breccias from the Chicxulub Impact Crater, Yucatan Peninsula, Yucatan, Mexico''. She later earned a Ph.D in Planetary Science at

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

in 2004 studying carbonate minerals in Martian meteorite

Allan Hills 84001 Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) is a fragment of a Martian meteorite that was found in the Allan Hills in Antarctica on December 27, 1984, by a team of American meteorite hunters from the ANSMET project. Like other members of the shergottite– n ...

which suggest the sample came from a surface on Mars that underwent multiple distinct exposures to liquid water, rather than long term exposure in a body of water.

Career

Field work

In 2001 and 2004, Corrigan travelled to Antarctica as a member of

ANSMET ANSMET (Antarctic Search for Meteorites) is a program funded by the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation that looks for meteorites in the Transantarctic Mountains. This geographical area serves as a collection point for met ...

(Antarctic Search for Meteorites) teams. She is a co-author of ''35 seasons of U.S. Antarctic meteorites (1976-2010): a pictorial guide to the collection'' (2014) (OCLC Number: 879851951).

Research and curation

Cari Corrigan was a postdoctoral fellow at

and

Applied Physics Lab The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (or simply Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL) is a not-for-profit university-affiliated research center (UARC) in Howard County, Maryland. It is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University ...

. In 2004, Corrigan was instrumental in the initial examination and classification of newly discovered Martian meteorite MIL03346, only the seventh known

Nakhlite Nakhlites are a group of Martian meteorites, named after the first one, Nakhla meteorite. Nakhlites are igneous rocks that are rich in augite and were formed from basaltic magma about 1.3 billion years ago. They contain augite and olivine crysta ...

. In early 2008, Corrigan was hired to classify meteorites and curate the meteorite collection for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. As a curator, she is responsible for classifying meteorite samples collected in Antarctica for the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter.

Other professional work

Corrigan helps process and analyze images from the

Mars Exploration Rover NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, ''Spirit (rover), Spirit'' and ''Opportunity (rover), Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rove ...

project's

Opportunity rover ''Opportunity'', also known as MER-B (Mars Exploration Rover – B) or MER-1, and nicknamed Oppy, is a Robotics, robotic rover (space exploration), rover that was active on Mars from 2004 until 2018. ''Opportunity'' was operational on Mars for ...

. Corrigan is a member of the science team working with Moon Zoo, a

Zooniverse Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful Citizen science, citizen science projects. The organization grew from ...

citizen science The term citizen science (synonymous to terms like community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is research conducted with participation from the general public, or am ...

project. She is interested in linking lunar meteorites to impact craters on the lunar surface. On behalf of the

Meteoritical Society The Meteoritical Society is a non-profit scholarly organization founded in 1933 to promote research and education in planetary science with emphasis on studies of meteorites and other extraterrestrial materials that further our understanding of th ...

, Corrigan is editor of the society's contributions to ''Elements'' magazine.

Honors

* The central

main-belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids ...

asteroid 9924 Corrigan, discovered by American astronomer

Schelte Bus Schelte John "Bobby" Bus (born 1956) is an American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi and deputy director of NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) at the Mauna Kea Obser ...

at the Australian

Siding Spring Observatory Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia, part of the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics (RSAA) at the Australian National University (ANU), incorporates the Anglo-Australian Telescope along with a coll ...

in 1981, was named after her on 13 April 2017 ().

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Corrigan, Catherine (Cari) American curators American women curators Case Western Reserve University alumni Living people Michigan State University alumni Smithsonian Institution people 1972 births 21st-century American women scientists American planetary scientists American women planetary scientists