Project Nike was a U.S. Army project, propose in May 1945 by Bell Labs, to develop a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project delivered the United States' first operational anti-aircraft missile system in 1953, the Nike Ajax. A huge number of the technologies and rocket systems used to develop the Nike Ajax were re-used in a number of roles, many of which gained the "Nike" name (after Nike, the goddess of victory from Greek mythology). The missile's first-stage solid rocket booster became the basis for everything from the Nike Hercules missile to NASA's Nike Smoke rocket, used for upper-atmosphere research.