Richard Kowalski
The Catalina Sky Survey astronomer who discovered 2008 TC3, the first asteroid ever found before it hit the Earth.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Asteroid surveyor
Richard A. Kowalski is an astronomer with the Catalina Sky Survey, based at the University of Arizona, which searches the night sky for near-Earth asteroids from telescopes in the mountains near Tucson.
In the early hours of 6 October 2008, Kowalski spotted a faint, fast-moving object on images taken with the survey's telescope on Mount Lemmon. Within hours, astronomers around the world measured its path. It was a tiny asteroid, about 4 metres across, and it was on a direct course for Earth. It was named 2008 TC3. About 20 hours after its discovery, early on 7 October, it blazed into the atmosphere above northern Sudan and exploded high over the Nubian Desert, just where and when it had been predicted.
Weeks later, searchers led by Peter Jenniskens and Muawia Shaddad found its fragments scattered in the desert. Known as Almahata Sitta, they are mainly ureilites, a rare kind of achondrite, mixed with pieces of several other meteorite types.
Kowalski also discovered 2014 AA, the second asteroid found before impact, which fell into the Atlantic Ocean in January 2014. Since then several more small asteroids have been caught before striking, a growing sign of how well the sky is now watched.
On the timeline
- 6–7 October 20082008 TC3: an asteroid seen before it hit
- 2 January 2014A second asteroid spotted before impact