Former NASA Astronaut Jose Hernandez Speaks at University of North Dakota

Jose Hernandez, a former NASA astronaut with an extraordinary, only-in-America story, will visit UND on Wednesday, Sept. 17. The campus community is invited to join him for a guided conversation that afternoon as part of the Hilyard Center’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Hernandez will be at the Memorial Union ballroom for a talk from 3 to 4 p.m. followed by a meet-and-greet.

He will also visit the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences to sign the NASA space capsule displayed on campus.

Hernandez currently serves as CEO of Stockton, Calif.-based engineering consultancy Tierra Luna Engineering, serves on the University of California Board of Regents and is a 2016 recipient of the National Hispanic Hero Award presented by the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute. His journey as the first migrant farmworker to become an American astronaut served as the inspiration for the 2023 film “A Million Miles Away,” starring Michael Pena as Hernandez.

Following 11 separate applications to join NASA, Hernandez became a materials research engineer in the agency’s Materials & Processes Branch in 2001. From 2002 to 2004, he served as branch chief. Hernandez was selected as part of NASA’s 19th class of astronauts in 2004, and he completed astronaut candidate training in 2006. In 2009, he served on the STS-128 Discovery mission to the International Space Station. It was the 128th shuttle mission and the 30th mission to the ISS. Spending nearly 14 days in space, Hernandez helped rotate an expedition crew member, attached a new module and transferred more than 18,000 pounds of supplies and equipment to the station. His crew also conducted three spacewalks in its 217 orbits of the Earth and 5.7 million miles traveled, according to Hernandez’s NASA biography. Hernandez left NASA in 2011.

Raised as one of four kids in a migrant farming family from Mexico, Hernandez grew up traveling through California, hand-picking crops. He knew at an early age that he wanted to become an astronaut, according to a biography on his Reaching for the Stars Foundation website. “I was hoeing a row of sugar beets in a field near Stockton, and I heard on my transistor radio that Franklin Chang-Diaz had been selected for the Astronaut Corps,” he said. “I was already interested in science and engineering, but that was the moment I said, ‘I want to fly in space.’” At the University of the Pacific in Stockton, he earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1984 and received a full scholarship to further study engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1987, he accepted a position at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., where he worked until 2001. He served as an electronics engineer, helping to develop the first full-field digital mammography imaging system, which is used to detect breast cancer.

According to his NASA biography, Hernandez also served as program manager for the Office of International Material Protection and Emergency Cooperation, representing the Livermore Lab. In this role, he worked with the U.S. Department of Energy in coordinating nuclear non-proliferation initiatives between the United States and the Russian Federation. Since leaving NASA, Hernandez served as executive director of strategic operations at MEI Technologies (now known as Aegis Aerospace), which specializes in space systems engineering, simulation and production. In 2012, he ran for Congress in California’s 10th Congressional District. From 2013 to 2016, Hernandez was president of Pt Strategies at private equity firm Pt Capital.