A Million Miles Away

In the 2023 biographical drama A Million Miles Away, directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella, the inspiring real-life story of Jose Hernandez (Michael Peña) unfolds across decades. Beginning as a child in a family of migrant farmworkers traveling between Michoacán, Mexico, and the agricultural fields of California, Jose harbors an impossible dream: to become a NASA astronaut. Supported by an encouraging schoolteacher who recognizes his brilliant mathematical mind, as well as his hardworking family, Jose earns a degree in electrical engineering and lands a job at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Despite facing eleven consecutive rejections from NASA's astronaut candidate program over more than a decade, Jose refuses to give up. With the steadfast support and sacrifice of his wife, Adela (Rosa Salazar), he methodically builds out every credential NASA looks for—earning his pilot's license, mastering scuba diving, and learning Russian—until he is finally selected for NASA Astronaut Group 19, eventually blasting off into space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-128.