José M. Hernández: A journey from migrant farmworker to astronaut

José M. Hernández was born in French Camp, California, and as a child worked alongside his family and other farmworkers harvesting crops and moving from one town to another. Even though he attended school sporadically and didn’t learn to speak English until he was 12, Hernández found stability in other subjects, like math and science, and became interested in engineering. He participated in Upward Bound during high school, a Federal TRIO program that prepares students for college. While in college, Hernández was involved in the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program, an academic preparation program that provides support to students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds so they can attain four-year degrees in STEM fields. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of the Pacific and a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
After earning a master’s degree in 1986, Hernández started work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. While at Lawrence Livermore, he co-developed the first full-field digital mammography system for the earlier detection of breast cancer, thus opening a new area of research called computer-aided diagnosis, and worked on the development of a space deployed X-Ray laser as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
From the time Hernández was 10 years old and watched Apollo 17 land a man on the moon, he dreamed of being an astronaut. Despite applying and being rejected to the NASA space program 11 times, he finally became an Astronaut Candidate in 2004. In 2009, he was selected for a space mission and flew as the flight engineer in the 14-day STS-128 mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station.
In 2023, the film, “A Million Miles Away,” was released about Hernández’s path from a farmworker to becoming an engineer and ultimately an astronaut.
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