José M. Hernández
American engineer and astronaut
José Moreno Hernández (born August 7, 1962) is a Mexican-American engineer and astronaut. He serves as a Regent of the University of California until 2033.
Hernández was on the Space Shuttle mission STS-128 in August 2009. He also served as chief of the Materials and Processes branch of Johnson Space Center. Hernández previously developed equipment for full-field digital mammography at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In October 2011, Hernández, at the urging of President Barack Obama, ran for Congress as a Democrat in California's newly redrawn 10th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He won the Democratic nomination but lost the 2012 general election to freshman Representative Jeff Denham.
Hernández is the subject of the 2023 biopic A Million Miles Away in which he is portrayed by Michael Peña.
Early life and education
Hernández was born in French Camp, California, but calls Stockton, California, his hometown. His family is originally from La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico.
“José M. Hernández” enters the record as american engineer and astronaut. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what José, Hernández and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“José M. Hernández” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, José, Hernández and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q716333. VIAF identifies the subject as 25153651670155781540. The Library of Congress control number is no2012130169. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 2033, 2009 and 2011.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “José M. Hernández” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.