NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center:Fact checking 'A Million Miles Away': How many times did NASA reject José M. Hernández?

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From the fields of California's Central Valley to more than 200 miles above the Earth, Amazon Prime Video's "A Million Miles Away" (now streaming) follows the real story of how José Moreno Hernández (played by Michal Peña) − who spent much of childhood laboring the fields with his family of migrant farmworkers − became a NASA astronaut.

The film sticks to the facts in Hernández's memoir, but director Alejandra Márquez Abella took some "poetic licenses," she says.

"It happens more so with stories that feel so improbable like José's. If someone tells you his story, you're going to be like, 'Really? A migrant farmworker turned astronaut? That really happened?' (It) can feel so unbelievable, so you have to have a clear trajectory within the film and have it be emotional so it doesn't let go of the viewer," she adds.

Here's what's fact and what's fiction:

Is 'A Million Miles Away' a true story?

"A Million Miles Away" is inspired by the NASA flight engineer and based on Hernández's 2012 autobiography, "Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut."

Hernández says Márquez Abella did a "masterful job at representing my story and ensuring that it wasn't just a story about one individual as a migrant farmworker to become a NASA astronaut but rather a community effort."

Hernández was born in French Camp, California, but calls Stockton, California, his home base. His family is from La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico.

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How many times did NASA reject José M. Hernández?

Hernández was rejected for astronaut training by NASA eleven times. On his 12th try, he was selected in May 2004.

"Deep inside, I felt like, 'It was about damn time,'" he says. "I felt I had done the work and the preparation to finally get selected but you have to understand over 12,000 people apply for 10-15 positions so the competition is very stiff but I still thought, 'It's about time.'"

As rejection letters piled up, he researched the credentials of NASA astronauts and learned many of them were pilots and scuba divers. So he went on to earn a pilot's license and a scuba certification, per an interview published on the UC website.

In 2009, he was assigned to the crew of the Space Shuttle mission STS-128 and remained on board the International Space Station for 13 days.

In space, he listened to Mexican singer-songwriter José Alfredo Jiménez's "El Hijo del Pueblo" and ate tacos, per the film's end credits.

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Was José Hernández the first Hispanic astronaut?

No, but he is the first migrant farmworker to have traveled to space, according to the end credits.

The first Hispanic American astronaut to travel to space was Franklin R. Chang Díaz. Born in 1950 in San José, Costa Rica, Chang Díaz became the first Hispanic astronaut when NASA selected him in 1980. He's also a member of the NASA Astronaut Hall of Fame and is now retired.

Was José M. Hernández really mistaken for a janitor at work?

Yes. Per the movie, on his first day of work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, Hernández asked the receptionist about a loose bulb in his office. "You're the new guy, right?" she answers, pointing him to the supply room and handing him the janitor's master's keys.

Hernández says he was confused for a janitor on his first day. In a later scene of the movie, Hernández corrects the receptionist and tells her he's an engineer, not the janitor. "Not that there's anything wrong with it," he says.

At the laboratory in Livermore, Hernández helped develop the first full-field digital mammography imaging system which now aids in the early detection of breast cancer.

Was Ms. Young based on José Hernández's real childhood teacher?

"You are a force of nature. Nothing will stop you," Ms. Young (played by Michelle Krusiec) tells a young Hernández outside of his home.

Ms. Young, who taught Hernández and his cousin in school, sought his family out to ask about their uprooted lifestyle and whether moving their children around so much, working from field to field, was the best decision for their future.

"It's Ms. Young who comes and changes the trajectory of a whole family by spending 30 minutes with my parents and asking them if they've considered staying in one place," he says. "All that played an important role."

As shown in the movie, Hernández confirms that Ms. Young was also there to see him off at the launch of his space mission.

Did José Hernández really have to court his wife Adela at her parents' home?

In the movie, when the two begin dating, Peña's Hernández asks Rosa Salazar's Adela if she has a dream she wants to realize. She replies she wants to be a chef and open her own restaurant. (Adela would later run her own Mexican restaurant just outside the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, called Tierra Luna Grill, or Earth Moon Grill.)

"What's your big goal?" Adela asks him. "I want to be an astronaut," he responds as Adela bursts out laughing. Deadpan, Hernández doesn't laugh or say anything, to which Adela reacts, "Oh my God, you're serious. OK."

Hernández says that really happened, "but she did it in a very loving way. She didn't expect that I was going to give her that answer and I did, and then we never talked about it again until later on in life when we were married."

Hernández says it was also true he couldn't take her out on dates early on in their relationship. "If you want to visit, you will always be welcome but I have to be present," Adela's traditional Mexican father (played by Gerardo Trejoluna) tells him.

"I couldn't say, 'Oh let's go out to dinner at a restaurant.' No, if I was going to see her I had to court there in her house and her dad had to be present," Hernández says.

He and his wife Adela share five children: Julio, Karina, Vanessa, Marisol and Antonio. 

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