#SoCaltech: Hemani Kalucha

"My favorite moments are when we have our weekly meetings with the Caltech professors and students from the team, and the 10 of us get to spend a Friday ruminating on the nature of early Mars like I imagine scholars in the 16th century did. But instead of apples falling on our heads, John Grotzinger annotates sedimentary beds on Zoom and we all squint at an image and try to find sulfate crystals where there may not be any. It's a privilege to squint at sulfate crystals with professors like Woody [Fischer] and Ken [Farley] and Bethany [Ehlmann] and John, who are just so enthusiastic about squinting, and inspiring in their span of knowledge. What's most interesting to me in all of this is decoding the history and origin of life. Depending on the day, we feel closer to or further from finding life on Mars, but that's the fun of it. ... Yeah, sometimes your data makes no sense, or the detector betrays you, or you create the wrong story with the rocks, and it's disheartening. But then I just remind myself that I'm looking at the image of a crack in a rock taken by a robot that is 245 million miles away, and it makes all the disappointment worth it."

Hemani Kalucha is a second-year graduate student in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences who works with Woody Fischer, professor of geobiology, and currently operates the SuperCam instrument on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. She spoke about her experiences working with the rover as part of Caltech's 2021 virtual convocation.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.