NE North Dakota News

Former NASA astronaut José Hernández visited the University of North Dakota (UND) on September 17, sharing his personal story with students, faculty, and staff as part of Hispanic Heritage Month and Homecoming Week events. The event was hosted by the Hilyard Center and UND’s Department of Space Studies.

Hernández spoke about his early life as a child in a migrant farmworker family that traveled across California following seasonal harvests. He described how his family's decision to settle in Stockton, California, after encouragement from a teacher provided him with the stability needed for academic success. Despite being an "A student" in high school, Hernández faced challenges when he entered college. “I was an A student in high school, but at university I was a C and D student,” he said.

He credited his improvement to joining study groups, seeking tutors, and using professors’ office hours. At age 10, inspired by watching Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan walk on the moon, Hernández told his father he wanted to be an astronaut. His father responded with what Hernández calls “the recipe for success”:

- Determine your purpose in life.

- Recognize how far you are from that goal.

- Draw yourself a roadmap to get there.

- Prepare yourself with education and training.

- Always give more than people expect of you

“I still use it today,” Hernández told UND students.

Hernández applied to NASA’s astronaut program 11 times before being selected on his 12th attempt. He improved his qualifications after each rejection by earning advanced degrees, becoming a pilot and scuba diver, learning Russian, and excelling at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “The way I saw it,” Hernández explained, “if those selected had something I didn’t, I needed to go get it.”

In 2009, he served as flight engineer aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-128 and spent two weeks on the International Space Station (ISS). He described launch as feeling like a “9.0 Richter scale earthquake” before accelerating rapidly into orbit.

Hernández also shared practical details about spaceflight—including the smell of the ISS (“like a gym”)—and emphasized how seeing Earth from space changed his perspective: “You realize we are one human race,” he said. “I wish every world leader could see that view. Our planet would be in a much better place.”

He highlighted another career achievement: helping co-develop the first full-field digital mammography system while at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after repurposing X-ray modeling work from a canceled defense project. The technology has contributed to earlier detection of breast cancer.

“That’s my most important contribution,” Hernández said.

Throughout the session, Hernández encouraged students to overcome imposter syndrome and take advantage of available academic resources such as tutoring and study groups. He stressed effort over innate ability: “Never doubt yourself,” he said. “You’re here for a reason. The University thought you were qualified. The question is: are you working hard enough, and are you working smart enough?”

He also discussed balancing career ambitions with family responsibilities; declining further space missions so as not to disrupt his children’s lives: “Latinos are big with la familia,” he said. “The hardest decision of my career was stepping away from NASA, but I look at how my kids turned out, and I know I made the right choice.”

Addressing UND students directly about their own impact as role models within their communities Hernandez concluded: “Like it or not, you’re role models too... Once you go to college, you’re already setting the tone for your community.”