Jose M. Hernandez
- STS- 128 (2009)
José Moreno Hernández ( born August 7, 1962 in French Camp, California ) is a former American astronaut.
Life
Youth and studies
Hernandez comes from a Mexican peasant family who lived through the winter in Michoacan, to November but moved from March through California as migrant workers. The children went there in local schools, but had in the summer holidays to work seven days a week in the fields. A teacher persuaded Hernández's father to settle down, and so the family stayed in Stockton. Only at the age of 12 years, José learned English.
Hernández received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the University of the Pacific in Stockton in 1984. With a scholarship he studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he reached the 1986 Masters title.
Working as an engineer
From 1987 he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, where he had worked as a student. In 2001 he moved to NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Astronauts activity
Selection and training
The decision to become an astronaut, met Hernandez in 1980 in high school, when he heard of the selection of Franklin Chang- Diaz, who is also Hispanic.
Hernández competed in 1998 and 2000 in vain at NASA as an astronaut. The next round of applications in May 2003, he took the third attempt and this time was successful. On 6 May 2004, he was presented along with 10 other candidates to the public. The initial training lasted until February 2006, and thereafter Hernández was assigned to the department that is responsible at the Kennedy Space Center for launch and landing preparations for the Space Shuttle.
STS -128
On 15 July 2008 Hernández was nominated as a mission specialist for space flight STS -128. The launch took place on 29 August 2009 and the landing on 12 September 2009.
According to the NASA
Hernández left NASA in January 2011 and went to the company MEI Technologies, where he is responsible for international cooperation.
Private
In December 2005, Hernández founded the Foundation Jose Hernandez Reaching for the Stars Foundation, which promotes the education of gifted adolescents.
In the congressional elections of 2012, Hernández advertises as a Democrat to the seat of the retiring Dennis Cardoza.
Hernandez is married and has five children.