09/23/2026
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, meet José M. Hernández, a Mexican-American engineer and astronaut!
After watching the Apollo 17 mission on TV as a young boy, José M. Hernández began dreaming of touching the stars. He wanted to become an astronaut. The son of very poor Mexican immigrants who travelled from town to town following work in the fields, that dream seemed pretty far off. His dad, Salvador, who only had a 3rd grade education himself, said if José wanted to turn his dream into a reality, he needed a plan.
“He empowered me. He validated that dream by saying, ‘I think you can do it,’ as opposed to saying, ‘This is too far of a stretch for you. Select something else.’…Then he said, ‘If you really want to reach this [goal], let’s follow these five simple steps…[First], determine your purpose in life. What does José want to be when he grows up? Second, recognize how far you are [from your goal]. Third, draw yourself a roadmap so you know how to get there. Fourth, prepare yourself according to the challenge you picked. And fifth, develop a work ethic second to none, [using the] same effort you put [into] picking fruits and vegetables, Saturdays and Sundays, seven days a week during the summer…You put that effort there. And when you graduate college, you put it in your job. That’s the recipe to succeed.’ I never forgot that, and I still live by those steps.”
After NASA rejected his application 11 times, José added a sixth step of his own: perseverance. On his 12th application, he was accepted and became part of NASA's 19th class of astronauts.
In 2007, he served as an aquanaut aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory, living and working underwater for 11 days. He finally saw his dream of touching the stars in August of 2009 as part of the Space Shuttle Discovery team of astronauts who travelled to space for 14 days.
José a currently owns an aerospace company, a wine vineyard, Tierra Luna Cellars, and has written four books. A movie was made of the biographical book he wrote about his life, both called A Million Miles Away.
Read more: From Migrant Farmworker to Space Shuttle Astronaut: The Journey of José M. Hernández
“I want to be like that guy. I want to be an astronaut.” José M. Hernández remembers saying those words to himself at age 10 after watching Gene Cernan walk on the moon duri…
