On Christmas Eve, we feel it is appropriate to bring you the recently released MoonSwatch Mission to Earthphase, a first in terms of our planet’s appearance from space featuring as a complication in a wristwatch. It celebrates the first time that human eyes saw our planet rising on the horizon, a photograph taken by Bill Anders aboard the Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968.
Without a doubt, the Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch collaboration has been one of the noted new watch series in the 2020s. It cleverly uses the design codes of Omega’s iconic Speedmaster, the first watch on the Moon, with an innovative bioceramic material in an array of colours that incorporate space mission themes. It started with a collection including our satellite, all planets – including Earth – and the Sun in March 2022. They were an immediate success.
Similar in design and colouring to the Speedmasters worn by astronauts, the Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch Mission to Earthphase on its Velcro strap.
New iterations were released in 2023 and 2024, but this year, when it came to our planet, the creatives at the Swatch group sought inspiration in the first ever photograph taken of Earth from space. Probably that’s why this watch is called Mission to Earthphase, instead of Mission On Earth, as in previous versions.
The story is spellbinding. It was aboard the Apollo 8 command module, orbiting the Moon, that humans first witnessed earth phase. Originally not tasked with such a flight, the mission objectives changed with NASA trying to meet President Kennedy’s 1961 mandate that a man should land on the lunar surface before the end of the decade. It was a flight into the unknown. Until Apollo 8, the farthest any space craft had travelled was 850 miles from Earth. The round trip to the Moon is approximately 240,000 miles. The crew were flying a Saturn V that had failed on its previous test attempt, in a command module with only one rocket that had equally failed in its last mission, to enter Moon’s orbit at Christmas, and then attempt the journey home. It was estimated that one in four people around the globe watched the pioneering flight on television.
Despite the inherent risks, the rocket made it, and as the space craft came out of the dark from the far side of the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968, across the monochromatic lunar landscape, the radiant blue and green bauble that we know as home arose on the horizon. It was the first time that human eyes had witnessed Earth as the rising satellite. The famous photograph, taken by crew member Bill Anders had a profound effect on the way our planet was viewed against the vastness of space beyond. At the time, Anders thoughts were that Earth was akin to being “In a darkened room with only one visible object, a small blue-green sphere about the size of a Christmas-tree ornament.”
Earth rise, taken by Apollo 8 crew member Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, at mission time 075:49:07 (16:40 UTC), © NASA/Bill Anders
Coming back to the watch that pays homage to that moment, the Mission to Earthphase features a case, crown and pushers made from the brand’s patented light grey bioceramic, with a grainy grey dial that mirrors the lunar surface, with subdials of the coloured earth phase indicator, and moon phase indicator with Super-LumiNova®, so they glow at night. Beneath the dial, the watch is powered by a quartz chronograph movement. The strap is black Velcro® with a contrasting light grey topstitching and a bioceramic loop. The patented earth indicator and moon phase on the new Swatch dial turn in opposite directions on a 29.5-day cycle, so that when it is a full Moon, Earth is in darkness, but when it’s a new Moon, Earth is completely visible. It is an interesting complication and creates the same effect as the Earth rising to astronauts aboard Apollo 8, but the display runs on a different scale.
Night and day: detail of the dial showing Earth visible in the dark thanks to the oceans being coloured in blue Super-LumiNova®
The phenomenon of earth phase is only visible to an observer in motion relative to the lunar surface. The Moon’s synchronous rotation relative to our planet means that we always see the same side, so Earth would appear stationary from its satellite. In order to observe the effect of Earth rising or setting over the lunar horizon, an observer must travel towards or away from the point where our planet is directly overhead (centred in the sky), such as being aboard the command module. In effect, the Mission to Earthphase replicates the Apollo 8 flight, but at a slower speed.
What makes this watch compelling is that the poetry and the uniqueness in the earth phase complication, creating that wonder of our planet as it might appear to those orbiting the Moon; and at Christmas, a timely reminder of human’s first glimpse of our precious blue and green “Christmas-tree ornament” from the vastness and otherwise lifeless void of space.
Find out more about the MoonSwatch Mission To Earthphase, HERE.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
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