— "The Birthplace of Aviation" now has a license to promote its hub for aeronautics and space advancements.

Ohio, home to NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, will begin offering a license plate featuring the facility's name and the federal agency's insignia.

"The specialty license plate allows NASA fans to show support for their community and Ohio's NASA center," read the release announcing the new plate.

As authorized by the state's legislature, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles will begin offering the new "NASA Glenn Research Center" license plate on Wednesday (April 9). The plate will cost $10 more than the standard Ohio state plate. NASA will not receive any money from the license plate's sales.

"The request for this commemorative plate comes directly from the dedicated staff at the NASA Glenn Research Center, who were able to collect well over 300 signatures in support of this commemorative license plate in record time, clearly demonstrating the community's enthusiasm for this license plate," said Ohio State Representative Bride Rose Sweeney in her testimony before the state legislature in December 2024."

In addition to the words "NASA Glenn Research Center" and the image of NASA's "meatball" logo, the new license plate displays the state nickname, "The Birthplace of Aviation," on a red ribbon being towed by the 1903 Wright Flyer, the world's first powered flying machine (or airplane) to achieve controlled flight.

"Ohio has been a cornerstone of our nation's aerospace industry, instrumental in our nation's aerospace firsts — home of the first flight, the first American to orbit Earth and the first man on the moon," said Sweeney. "Since its establishment in 1941, the NASA Glenn Research Center has been the hub of aerospace innovation in Ohio as one of only ten NASA research facilities in the United States and the only facility of its kind in the entire Midwest."

"Right here in Ohio, NASA engineers built the hydrogen rocket that put the first man on the moon, the electrical system that powers the International Space Station and they are currently working on the Artemis Program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence in deep space," she said.

Ohio is at least the second state to recognize its NASA research center on a specialty license plate. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles has a similar plate available for NASA Langley Research Center, although the background of the plate is also customized, depicting the sky and the outline of a jet leaving behind a contrail.

Other space-themed state license plates include Florida's Challenger-Columbia plate memorializing the fallen NASA space shuttles and their crews, with sales benefiting the Astronauts Memorial Foundation; and Alabama's "Space Tag," featuring NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the phrase "Dare to Explore," which benefits the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Education Foundation.

From 2000 to 2009, Texas was the only state to include spaceflight as part of its general issue design. An illustration of a space shuttle orbiter was included on its "Panoramic Texas" plate, opposite a crescent moon in the night sky. Two years after space shuttle Columbia was lost as it reentered Earth's atmosphere and fell back to Earth over the state in 2003, the license plate's design was amended to add a U.S. flag on the winged spacecraft and seven stars representing the seven fallen astronauts.

In addition to the new "NASA Glenn Research Center" issue, Ohio drivers can also pick from specialty license plates displaying the logo of the National Aviation of Hall of Fame, which honors a number of NASA astronauts in addition to pioneering pilots and aerospace leaders, and the "Leader in Flight" plate, depicting a shuttle orbiter and the Flyer in support of the National Aviation Heritage Area.