José Moreno Hernández was born on August 7, 1962, in French Camp, California, but calls Stockton, California, his hometown. He is an American engineer of Mexican descent and a NASA astronaut. His family is from La Piedad, Michoacán, with indigenous Purépecha roots.[1][2] In an August 25, 2009 conversation with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, Hernández stated that as a child, he lived half the year in La Piedad and half in the United States.[2] As a child, Hernández worked alongside his family throughout the fields of California, harvesting crops and moving from one town to another. He attended many schools and didn't learn to speak English until he was 12.[3] He is currently assigned to the crew of Space Shuttle mission STS-128. Hernandez also served as chief of the Materials and Processes branch of Johnson Space Center. He previously developed equipment for full-field digital mammography at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of the Pacific, 1984. M.S., Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of California-Santa Barbara, 1986.
In 2001, Hernández joined the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas.
Selected by NASA in May 2004. In February 2006 he completed Astronaut Candidate Training that included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. On completing this initial training, Hernández was assigned to the Shuttle Branch to support Kennedy Space Center Operations in support of Shuttle launch and landing preparations. He worked various technical assignments until his selection on July 15, 2008, as a mission specialist of the STS-128 mission, which launched on August 28, 2009. While in orbit, Hernandez became the first person to use the Spanish language in space on Twitter.[4][5]
STS-128 mission ended its 14 days journey on September 11, 2009 at Edwards Air Force Base, California at 5:53 pm PST.
Hernandez is married and has five children, ages 6 to 14. His wife, Adela, runs a Mexican restaurant just outside the Johnson Space Center gates, called Tierra Luna Grill, Spanish for Earth Moon Grill.[5][6]
In September 2009, Hernandez began speaking out to support a legalization path for immigrants: "Having 12 million undocumented people here means there's something wrong with the system, and the system needs to be fixed."[7] Hernandez called this his personal opinion, and not a representation of NASA policy.
