Jose Hernandez, 40, was selected among 99 people to be trained for three years by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NASA introduced on Thursday the 11 astronaut candidates it selected at the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia, just outside Washington.

"The class is made up of pilots and engineers who will help us develop the next generation vehicle, scientists who will do research to help humans live and travel in space," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said.

Hernandez, born in French Camp, California, is the son of farmers from Michoacan, in the western part of Mexico.

"We worked in the California countryside picking cucumbers, cherries, apples and anything else," Hernandez told reporters in Spanish late Wednesday. "Although my parents only reached the third grade in school, they considered education very important."

"Thanks to them and their expectations, I was motivated to move ahead," said the engineer, who has diplomas from the University of the Pacific and University of California at Santa Barbara.

Hernandez helped develop in the early 1990s the first full-field digital mammography imaging system, a tool in the early detection of breast cancer, NASA said.

SPACE.WIRE