How José M. Hernández Went from Migrant Farmworker to NASA Astronaut? An Inspiring American Dream Story

The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut

Discover the remarkable journey of José M. Hernández, who rose from migrant farmworker roots to become a NASA astronaut. This in-depth review of “Reaching for the Stars” explores his inspiring story, the power of perseverance, and actionable lessons for achieving your dreams. Read on to learn how determination and education can help you reach your own stars.

Ready to be inspired by a true story of grit and achievement? Continue reading to uncover the key lessons from José M. Hernández’s extraordinary journey and find out how you can apply his roadmap to your own ambitions.

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Mexican farmworker Salvador Hernández pursued his dreams for his family, making the risky journey to the United States in search of a better life. His son, José M. Hernández, born and raised in California’s Central Valley, helped in the fields from an early age. As he recounts, his hard-working family kept him focused on education and his future despite the prejudice he encountered. Staring at the night sky, he didn’t just dream of the stars. Inspired by the Apollo 17 mission, he knew wanted one day to fly among them as an astronaut. After earning his engineering degrees, he worked for the legendary Lawrence Livermore Labs, the US Department of Energy, and then NASA, finally becoming an astronaut. His heartwarming book is a welcome illustration of what the American dream can still mean.

Take-Aways

• José Hernández’s courageous immigrant parents are his role models.
• The first moon landing inspired Hernández.
• Hernández’s parents believed their son should be in school, not working in the fields.
• Hernández worked multiple jobs throughout college, convinced that education was the path to his future.
• His parents inspired Hernández to pursue his unlikely ambitions.
• Hernández surmounted rejection.
• NASA selected Hernández as an astronaut after the Columbia tragedy.
• Hernández realized his lifelong dream in outer space.

Summary

José Hernández’s courageous immigrant parents are his role models.

José Hernández’s father, Salvador, came from the central Mexican state of Michoacán and went to work in the fields before he was 10 years old. Among farmworkers such as Salvador and his family, everyone planted, plowed, and harvested from dawn to dusk, with little or no time for school. Salvador never got beyond the third grade.

“My father had many dreams and goals at a very young age, and he did everything he could to make them a reality.”

Salvador realized that he couldn’t create a better life for himself amid the poverty and hopelessness in Michoacán. At 15, he ventured to the United States with a friend and only a few hundred pesos in his pocket. It took the boys a month to reach the American border. Exhausted and hungry, they met a man from their hometown who helped them cross the border and travel to the San Joaquin Valley in California, where they got work as undocumented migrant farmworkers.

The life of an undocumented migrant farmworker is arduous and precarious. But for Salvador and his friend, the United States offered them the possibility of getting ahead. In the summer, they picked strawberries and cucumbers. In the winter, they pruned trees. After more than two years, Salvador visited Mexico to see the young woman he loved. After another hiatus, they married and moved to California. They had children and applied for work papers. José M. Hernández, their youngest child, was born in August 1962.

The first moon landing inspired Hernández.

Going to school was a novelty for the young Hernández. He had to get up early to spend the day with other students who only spoke English, which he hadn’t yet learned. Even the kindergarten teacher spoke English only. Hernández was acutely aware that his brown skin made him different from the other kids. Still, his father insisted that everyone in the world is the same.

“I remember a specific incident that happened to me one day as I was walking to the bus after school. James, a fellow classmate, closely observed what I had brought for lunch before calling me ‘come taco,’ or taco eater. After seeing my homemade tacos, James’s facial expression was full of disgust.”

Hernández focused on his studies. Math came easily, but English less so. Since the family had to migrate to work, they spent most of the fall and winter in Mexico, then returned to California to harvest whatever crop needed workers – cucumbers, cherries, strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, or grapes, depending on the season. But whenever they came back to the United States, Hernández continued his education – and his parents made sure he did his homework. When he finished, he’d watch television, especially his favorite show, Star Trek.

Hernández’s impoverished family didn’t have much money for recreation, but Hernández had a secret hobby. With inspiration from Star Trek, he lovingly contemplated the stars at night. Once he saw a shooting star streak across the sky. And on July 20, 1969, although he was only seven years old, he was thrilled as he watched with the rest of the world as Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto the moon. But it was the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, that inspired Hernández to pursue the dream of becoming an astronaut.

Hernández’s parents believed their son should be in school, not working in the fields.

Fellow workers noticed that none of Salvador’s children were in the fields during the school week and that his family placed special emphasis on the importance of the kids’ education. Other workers pointed out that since Salvador’s children were older and stronger, they should be in the fields. Like many migrants, Salvador wanted to build a house back in Mexico, and putting more family members to work meant more income. But to Salvador and his wife, their children’s education mattered most.

“My parents made hard choices without having a clear idea as to whether or not their children would be inclined to seize the opportunities that had been made available. I credit my father and mother for giving my siblings and me the opportunity to get an education.”

Eventually, Hernández’s parents bought a home, and he entered middle school. He made friends at school and in the barrio. The neighborhood was rough, with gangs, drug dealers, occasional shootings, and broken families. Hernández took on a tougher persona among friends who thought school was pointless – and whose lives later went awry.

By 1980, José M. Hernández, by then the class president, was ready to graduate and move on to university. He heard about Dr. Franklin Chang Díaz, a poor boy from Costa Rica who came to the United States on a scholarship and studied engineering at MIT. Chang Díaz became NASA’s first Latino astronaut candidate.

With the help of a devoted teacher, Hernández got a scholarship to study engineering at the University of the Pacific near his home.

Hernández worked multiple jobs throughout college, convinced that education was the path to his future.

Hernández was anxious on his first day at the university in 1980. He couldn’t sleep the night before classes began. The feeling reminded him of his first day of elementary school when he couldn’t speak English. He got up extra early, stuffed his backpack with notebooks, and figured out what he wanted to wear. He wasn’t just a high school student hanging out with friends on street corners anymore – he was a college student. He drove himself to school in his 1964 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport.

“From the moment I first stepped foot into the freshman physics classroom, I knew the material being taught was not going to be easy. I had a feeling deep inside my heart that math was no longer going to be good to me.”

Hernández took physics, chemistry, calculus, and computer programming. He held a summer job at a local cannery, although its season overlapped the school year. He worked graveyard shifts at the cannery and earned extra money as a busboy at a Mexican restaurant. Hernández felt like an outsider on campus. Unlike most other students, he was poor and brown, and he spoke with an accent. But thinking of his parents’ sacrifices kept Hernández focused, along with the help of an adviser in the Community Involvement Program. Becoming an astronaut wasn’t a dream anymore. It was something Hernández worked toward, step by step.

The university’s engineering program required Hernández to acquire professional experience through an internship. When he learned that internships were available at the prestigious Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he applied. He didn’t get the internship, but the lab offered Hernández a job through a program for minority students funded by the Office of Equal Opportunity.

His parents inspired Hernández to pursue his unlikely ambitions.

Hernández graduated from the University of the Pacific in 1985 at age 22. His family attended the ceremony. His sister and two brothers had already received college degrees. When Hernández received his diploma cum laude, his parents beamed with pride. He told them, “You’re the best parents in the whole world!”

“I wasted no time in starting my career at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.”

At first, the people at the front desk at the Livermore lab thought that Hernández, given his Hispanic last name, was the new janitor. With inspiration again from Dr. Franklin Chang Díaz, he decided to apply to graduate school in engineering. Several programs accepted him, and he chose the University of California at Santa Barbara.

He earned a full scholarship from the Graduate Engineering Minority program, and that enabled him to focus on his graduate studies full-time. He eventually returned to a good job at Livermore.

Hernández surmounted rejection.

Hernández worked for four years at the laboratory, which specializes in nuclear defense and energy. One of his first projects was working on a nuclear X-ray laser, part of President Ronald Reagan’s space-based Strategic Defense Initiative.

Then in December 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came to an abrupt end.

“We began to shut down the X-ray laser program and, as is typical with canceled programs, a lot of good work goes unused and gets mothballed.”

In 1992, Hernández contacted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) about becoming an astronaut. The list of requirements on the application included at least five years of experience working in a technical field and, ideally, a graduate degree. NASA initially rejected Hernández, but encouraged him to reapply. Hernández fell in love with the woman he would soon marry. He was no longer living only for himself.

Despite NASA’s initial rejection, new opportunities arose. The US Department of Energy created the High Enriched Uranium Transparency Program, to realize enriched uranium purchase agreements between the Energy Department and the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Atomic Energy. Hernández joined a team of engineers and scientists involved in negotiations in Geneva. He took more than a dozen work trips to Siberia.

NASA selected Hernández as an astronaut after the Columbia tragedy.

On January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded mid-flight, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Debris from the takeoff had damaged the shuttle’s thermal protection shield, causing it to break apart on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Hernández, who was working for NASA at the time, joined the team providing technical support for the investigation into the tragedy.

“The Challenger and Columbia incidents always remain on our minds. They remind us that spaceflight has not yet matured to the point that a space mission can be viewed as routine and without risks.”

​​​​In the fall of 2003, NASA began selecting new astronaut candidates again. Hernández had worked for NASA since 2001, but that gave him no advantage. When the interview process ended, he waited for months. Finally, Col. Bob Cabana of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate told him he’d been accepted.

Training for the mission would take two years. Astronaut training involves acquiring a variety of new skills. For example, trainees have to learn how to survive underwater and how to co-pilot T-34C airplanes. After that, they move on to the more complex T-38 jet trainer, which can break the sound barrier. Then, future astronauts study the space shuttle’s systems in classrooms and simulators, where they learn to respond to multiple system failures.

Hernández realized his lifelong dream in outer space.

Before the launch of his shuttle mission in 2009, José Hernández talked to his mother on the phone from quarantine at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. She asked him whether he was afraid, and he said no. But in the hour before the planned launch, as he sat on the shuttle’s flight deck, a flurry of thoughts rushed through his mind. He thought about working in the fields in California and his family’s hometown in Mexico. He thought about all the effort and sacrifice it took for him to get to this point. Due to the weather conditions, NASA canceled the flight at the last minute, but it launched without incident a few days later.

“We closed our helmet visors as we heard the three main engines light up.”

The shuttle continued upward until it was orbiting the Earth. Hernández’s first task was to install the computers. On the mission’s second day, he helped use a robotic arm to inspect the thermal protection system on the wings. On the third day, the shuttle had to complete the difficult task of docking with the International Space Station (ISS). The people aboard the ISS welcomed the new astronauts. Hernández and his team conducted experiments with a portable laboratory.

“I do this in the hope that perhaps my story may inspire others to leave behind a trail of their own footprints for a new generation to follow in. Only then can they reach their own stars.”

On day 14, having completed systems tests and preparations for leaving orbit, Hernández’s team was ready to return to Earth. Bad weather at the Kennedy Space Center meant they had to stay in space an extra day. Hernández hardly regretted that. The view of Earth from space was so spectacular he couldn’t even put it into words. On day 15, in a successful re-entry effort, his space shuttle burst through the clouds at 26,000 feet, and the craft took on the characteristics and speed of a normal airplane. When the shuttle landed, the triumphant astronauts applauded.

About the Author

José Moreno Hernández is an engineer and astronaut who flew on NASA’s space shuttle mission STS-128 in August 2009.