Ever since he was a child, José Hernández wanted to become an astronaut, and he is proud to talk about how he got from the fields of California farms to the International Space Station.
Hernández talked about his life and experiences Feb. 11 as a guest speaker at the University of Tennessee at Martin.
When Hernández was a child, he and his three siblings helped their parents work on farms in California, harvesting fruits and vegetables. The four children would go to school during the week and help with the farm work during the weekends and throughout the summer.
The family would drive to a different part of California every few months, returning to their home in La Piedad, Mexico, in November, then starting the whole process over again in February.
When Hernández’ father got married and they had children, they continued that work pattern year after year.
When Hernández was in the second grade, just before the family was to make its annual journey back to Mexico from Stockton, one of his teachers told him that she wanted to come to his house and talk to his parents.
At the house, the teacher told the parents that she wanted to talk to them about the education process for all of the Hernández children.
“Imagine I give you a fruit tree in a potted plant,” the teacher told Hernández’ father. “I want you to find the best ground, dig a hole, plant it and take good care of it: water it when you need to, fertilize it when you need to. But, in three months, I want you to find another piece of ground equally as good, dig a hole and transplant that tree to the new spot and take care of it.”
The teacher asked him to do that every three months, transplanting the fruit tree to a new place and keep taking care of it. She asked him what would become of that tree.
“The tree is not going to die because you’re feeding it,” the father replied. “But, you’re going to stunt its growth. It’s going to stay a small tree, and it probably won’t even bear fruit because it is so weak.
“You’re moving it around, and you’re not letting the roots grow deep. A tree needs to be in one place so the roots grow deep, so the branches can grow big and strong.”
Then, it suddenly came to him. He looked at the teacher and said, “Is that what you mean?” The teacher said, “That’s what I mean. I think my job is done here.”
The family still went back to Mexico each year, but the three months there turned into three weeks around the Christmas vacation, and they made Stockton their permanent California home.
When he was 10, Hernández watched the moonwalk during the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, on his family’s black-and-white TV in December 1972.
“Seeing Gene Cernan there, I said, ‘Man, I’m hooked. That’s what I want to be,” Hernández said. “’I want to be an astronaut.’”
While he was applying to become an astronaut, Hernández became an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he and a colleague developed the first full-field digital mammography imaging system, still used for early detection of breast cancer.
“We demonstrated to the (Food and Drug Administration) that our device provided much more information than traditional film-screen radiology,” Hernández said. “More information means earlier detection. Earlier detection saves lives.
“If people ask me what’s my proudest professional moment, it’s not being a NASA astronaut; it’s actually this because this has been demonstrated to save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives by now. So, I’m pretty proud of that. This has made a bigger impact on humanity than I could ever do by going into space.”
After receiving his sixth rejection letter from NASA, Hernández became frustrated, almost giving up on his dream. While he had framed his first rejection letter, he wadded up his sixth rejection letter and threw it on the floor.
His wife, Adela, found the crumpled letter and encouraged him not to quit, adding, “I don’t know what they (the selected astronaut candidates) have that you don’t have.”Hernández looked closer and saw that many of those selected were pilots, so he became a pilot. Many of them were qualified scuba divers, so he became a scuba diver.
“What really clinched the deal for me was my next five years at Lawrence Livermore Labs,” he said. “There was a project, and it was a project that no one wanted. It was going to Russia, helping them protect their nuclear material.”
No one wanted to go because the site was in Siberia, but Hernández volunteered because it would set him apart from other astronaut candidates. Five years later, NASA welcomed him to the 19th class of NASA astronauts.
Two years of study, training and learning how to work at the space station and do space walks later, he graduated and became a bona fide astronaut, eligible to be assigned to a space mission.
Before he got the call of his dreams, he continued training and learning until, at the age of 47, he was assigned to a mission.
Hernández was a member of Space Shuttle mission STS-128 in August-September 2009. The mission took the Space Shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station.
“I was on the second-to-last mission to finish construction of the International Space Station,” he said.
The crew took more than 7 tons of equipment to the International Space Station and installed the equipment inside and outside. It also did three spacewalks in crews of two for seven hours apiece during the 14-day mission.
Hernandez is the subject of a 2023 movie, “A Million Miles Away,” starring Michael Peña, based on his autobiography, “Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut.”
It took José Hernández 37 years from the time he set his goal of being an astronaut to fulfilling his dream. The experiences, knowledge and rewards that he gathered along the way have truly left this former farm worker outstanding in his field.
