Netflix plans to shoot a movie about one of Stockton’s hometown heroes — a kid who rose from working in the farm fields to reach for the stars.
NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez launched into space in 2009, spending 14 days orbiting the Earth. He was the first person to tweet in Spanish from space — fitting since he didn’t learn to speak English until he was 12.
His story will be a forthcoming movie based partly on his books, “From Farmworker to Astronaut” and “The Boy Who Touched the Stars.”
Hernandez was born in French Camp, grew up in Stockton and worked the fields with his parents. But he had a dream ever since he fixed the TV set to watch the Apollo 17 mission.
“If you can picture a 10-year-old kid watching a black-and-white TV, holding onto the rabbit ears to improve reception and astronaut Gene Cernan walking on the moon,” he said. “I was hooked and I said, ‘That’s my calling. That’s what I want to be. I want to be an astronaut.’”
Hernandez went on to graduate from University of the Pacific with an electrical engineering degree.
He later applied for astronaut training, but it was years before he was chosen as a flight engineer aboard the Space Shuttle mission STS-128. He says one thing kept him going.
“Perseverance because I was rejected 11 times,” he said. “It wasn’t until the 10th or 12th time that I finally got selected.”
Hernandez says the movie will likely start shooting this summer and be released in 2022.
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