 What is this thing and what is it doing in President Eisenhower's office? I'm Amy Shearer, and this week on Vintage Space, we're talking about the Jupiter Sea Nose Contest. In the early 1950s, the US Army started working on what became the Redstone Missile. It was conceived as a missile that could deliver a payload, like a warhead, to a target some 1,000 miles away. It was something that the Army Ballistic Missile Association, the group led by Werner von Braun, knew was technically feasible but also came with a number of design challenges. Design challenges like how to protect that warhead from atmospheric heating during a reentry. Members of the ABMA knew from World War II-era German testing that a payload would burn up in the atmosphere after falling from an altitude of about 107 miles. This wouldn't do for Redstone because the payload would be falling from a peak altitude of closer to 250 miles. There was also the fact that the Redstone would be traveling at very high speeds on its way to the target, compounding the heating problem. The ABMA tested a handful of shapes, materials, and methods for protecting a warhead from atmospheric reentry. And what they found was a heat shield made of phenolic resin, fiberglass, and asbestos was the best option. It would burn away during atmospheric entry, sparing the payload. It's almost the same thing that NASA used when it returned its Apollo astronauts from the moon. Lab tests confirmed that this was the best way to protect a warhead during atmospheric reentry, but the ABMA wanted at least one atmospheric reentry test. They got three, but the third was the most significant. The last of the three tests launched on August 8th, 1957. A one-third scale nose cone was launched off the Jupiter-C rocket. The nose cone reached a peak altitude of 270 miles and was subjected to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. The nose cone splashed down 1,150 miles from its launch site at Cape Canaveral. And when the Navy pulled it out of the ocean, it became the first object ever retrieved after a trip into space. Three months later, the nose cone made its TV debut sitting on the floor of President Eisenhower's office. The TV broadcast was done on November 7th of 1957, which is a little over a month after the first Sputnik went into orbit and a few days after the second Sputnik carrying the dog Leica also went into orbit. On the heels of these two massive Soviet successes, morale in America was understandably low and the country was still a month away from its own sidelight launch attempt. For Eisenhower, the nose cone sitting on the floor of his office was emblematic of America's continued technological superiority and soon-to-be dominance. Pointing to an object that had gone into space and had been subsequently recovered, the president said it was clear proof that America's technological might is not static but is constantly moving forward with technological improvement. That small-scale nose cone carried a lot of weight. Let me know what you guys think and leave any questions below. And for more on the story, check out the latest article from Vintage Space over on Popular Science. You can grab me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space and for weekly Vintage Space video updates, don't forget to subscribe.