José Hernández’s story is believed to be among the most incredible in modern history. A migrant farmworker, he felt God calling him to become a NASA astronaut when he was 10 years old. Unfortunately, NASA rejected him from its program 11 times before choosing him for its astronaut class in 2004. In 2009, Hernández made history aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, the first shuttle mission to send two Latino astronauts into space.
In an interview with The Christian Post, the 61-year-old said, “I attribute my success to pure naivete. At 10 years old, in 1972, I remember watching our rabbit-ear TV, and I saw astronaut Gene Cernan walk on the surface of the moon while Walter Cronkite narrated the moonwalk. And I told myself, ‘I want to be an astronaut.’ I felt a clear calling from God.” Despite his success, Hernández said his story isn’t really about him; it’s about the support circle surrounding him, backing his dream, including his migrant farmworker parents, his second-grade teacher, Miss Young, and his wife, Adela.
He said, “My journey isn’t about one individual’s quest to turn a dream into reality. It’s about my teacher who went to my house to convince my parents to stay in one place; it’s about my wife, who taught me perseverance and propped me up. It’s about my father, who only had a third-grade education but had the wisdom to give me a powerful, five-ingredient recipe when I told him I wanted to be an astronaut. He said: Find your purpose in life; recognize how far you are; draw a roadmap; if you don’t know how, learn, and when you think you’ve made it, you probably have to work harder.”
Hernández’s story is told in the new Amazon Prime movie “A Million Miles Away,” starring Michael Peña, Rosa Salazar and Julio César Cedillo. The film is directed by Alejandra Marquez and is based on Hernández’s 2012 memoir, Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut. The film premiered on Amazon Prime on Sept. 15 in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month and has remained at the No. 1 spot.
The film highlights the crucial role Hernández’s wife played in supporting him. After every rejection, Adela encouraged him to keep pursuing his dream. He said, “I had perseverance, but thanks to my wife, that got converted to strategic perseverance.” Today, the couple has been married for over three decades and share five children: Julio, Karina, Vanessa, Marisol and Antonio.
Hernández said instilling a strong work ethic and the value of hard work in children is crucial in a culture that often emphasizes instant gratification. All five of his children are college-educated; the oldest has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and dreams of becoming an astronaut. Hernández said he hopes his story is a testament to the power of faith, family and values and serves as an inspiration for aspiring astronauts and anyone striving to overcome obstacles and pursue their dreams.
He said, “I love the analogy of the monarch butterfly. It starts in Canada and makes its way to a sanctuary for monarch butterflies in Mexico. It’s several generations that it takes to make that trip to Mexico; it’s not the same one. That’s exactly what my father and I did. We made that effort so that the next generation can go farther and farther. In the movie, my father says, ‘We’re not grasshoppers. We’re all Monarch butterflies because we’re trying to have our kids go a little further than what we can.’ And that’s all we’re doing.”