— Among the artifacts now on display in the newly-opened Barack Obama Presidential Center is a jacket that was only worn for a few minutes.
Found in the “Science and Innovation” exhibit on the fifth level of the South Side of Chicago museum, the iconic “NASA blue” flight garment is of the type that astronauts wear when training on jets and while making public appearances. This coat, though, has a name tag that reads “President of the United States.”
Gifted to Obama in the Oval Office in November 2011, the jacket is adorned by mission patches that represent astronauts that he worked with and key spaceflights that occurred during the first of his two terms as the country’s leader.
There is an emblem for the space shuttle crew who deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, including pilot Charlie Bolden who Obama named as his NASA Administrator, and an insignia for the astronauts who installed the Quest airlock for the International Space Station, among them Janet Kavandi, then the agency’s director of flight operations.
There is a patch from the last flight of space shuttle Endeavour, which Obama traveled to Florida to see launch but missed due to a scrub. Instead he visited with its crew, including commander Mark Kelly, who later became a U.S. senator and attended the Obama Center’s grand opening ceremony on Thursday (June 18).
Lastly, on the jacket’s right shoulder are sewn the badges for the first and last missions of the 30-year space shuttle program. It was the STS-135 crew (together with Kavandi) who gave Obama the jacket “in appreciation of his support of space programs,” as the artifact label in the museum reads.
Similar jackets were presented to presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, but Obama was the only one to put it on and model it for the astronauts to see.
The Oval Office event was not Obama’s only encounter with a NASA garment when he was president. The jacket is displayed opposite a photo mural showing the president speaking on the South Lawn during the White House Astronomy Night in 2015. Obama is flanked to one side by an extravehicular mobility unit, or EMU, like space shuttle and station crew members wear to conduct spacewalks.
The jacket and photo are representative of most of the artifacts in the museum. They focus more on how Obama interacted with others than shine a light on him.
“It’s why we designed the center not not to be some lifeless mausoleum. I am too young for that,” said Obama at Thursday’s ribbon cutting. “We wanted it to be a vibrant, living celebration of community where we can learn together and share the joys of art and music and sport and play. Because it’s in those moments that we’re reminded of our common humanity and strengthen the bonds of trust that not only make our lives richer, but make our democracy stronger.”
That theme extends to another astronaut-related feature of the Obama Center. Located on Level 5, the “Imagine Your Impact” exhibit was named in honor of Mae Jemison by Exelon, which underwrote its creation. Jemison is a former NASA astronaut and the first Black woman to fly into space in 1992.
“Imagine Your Impact” focuses on how individual actions combine to impact our collective future by exploring the successes of figures such as Jemison, whose work laid the groundwork for progress.
In addition to artifacts and interactives, the Obama Presidential Center is also home to many works of art, from various interpretations of the “Hope” poster created by street artist Shepard Fairey (who later designed a mission patch for a U.S. National Laboratory payload on the space station) to Kiki Smith’s “Receive,” a large bronze sculpture of the moon and stars celebrating our “shared connection to the cosmos, offering hope, orientation and solace in the heart of the museum.”
During his presidency, Obama was in office for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing; NASA launched the first U.S. mission to the moon in more than 10 years (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LRO and LCROSS); his administration established and saw the launch of the commercial crew program; and, with Congress, further development of the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, now elements of NASA’s Artemis program.
