Back in the 1950s, the media coined the term “the space race” to describe the intense Cold War technological rivalry between the United States and the USSR for space superiority. Throughout mankind’s reach for the stars, there has been a parallel race between watch firms to be on the wrist of astronauts.
In the 1950s, Mercury astronauts were issued with specially modified 24-hour Jaeger-LeCoultre Quartermaster watches by NASA. But for the actual missions, the choice was down to the pilot in the capsule. John Glenn in Mercury-Atlas 6 used a Heuer stopwatch (ref. 2915A) strapped to his suit. John Carpenter in Mercury-Atlas 7 wore a specially commissioned 24-hour Breitling Navitimer Cosmonaute. The final two, Wally Schirra in 1962 and Gordon Cooper in 1963, both wore their personal Omega Speedmaster ref. CK2998, although the latter also wore an Accutron Astronaut tuning fork watch on his other wrist.
Famously, during his final orbit, Cooper suffered a major power failure that disabled the guidance and control systems. Required to fly a manual reentry, he used his Omega to time the manual retro rocket burn, while using star patterns, and drawing reference lines on the capsule window for altitude orientation. Nonetheless, Cooper completed the most accurate landing in the entire Mercury program, proving that a dependable and accurate wristwatch was necessary as a flight instrument.
Gordon Cooper, in 1959, after manually splash-landing his capsule using visual navigation and his Omega Speedmaster ref. CK2998. © NASA.
The Soviets were issued with Russian-made mechanical timepieces, such as the Sturmanskie worn by Yuri Gagarin, which therefore hold the distinction of being the first watch in space. They were generally for military use only and produced by the First Moscow Watch Factory. Later Russian cosmonauts used Strela chronographs (also manufactured by the First Moscow Watch Factory), with Alexei Leonov wearing one to undertake the first spacewalk in 1965.
In the early 1960s – with more complex missions planned – NASA decided they needed to test and authorise a watch for the astronauts to wear during the Gemini and Apollo missions. These watches needed to withstand extreme temperatures, high pressure, shock, and the vacuum of space to ensure mission safety and accuracy during critical manoeuvres, particularly the EVA (extra vehicular activity) where the astronaut (with the watch on their wrist) was outside the capsule.
NASA requested “high-quality chronographs” from several brands, but only four, Omega, Rolex, Longines-Wittnauer and Hamilton, responded. Tested by engineer James Ragan, only the Omega Speedmaster ref. 105.003 survived, becoming the only one authorised for space flight, and was subsequently worn by NASA astronauts on the moon, on space walks and inside the capsule. It famously saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts, earning a “Snoopy Award” in the process (a prestigious honour given to NASA employees and contractors for outstanding achievements related to flight safety or mission success) as they needed to time a flight path adjustment to get back to Earth.
There was still the occasional NASA astronaut who chose something different. Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Eugene Cernan wore the Rolex GMT-Master. As space exploration moved on to new objectives with orbital space stations, other watches accompanied the astronauts. William Pogue wore his personal Seiko 6139 chronograph on the Skylab 4 mission; Gerald Carr chose his Movado Datachron HS360 on his ankle to test if an automatic watch would work in a weightless environment; German astronaut Reinhard Furrer wore a Sinn 140 S during the D1 Spacelab mission in 1985.
Fortis watches tested in collaboration with the Swedish Space Corporation, lifted into space on a gondola driven by a stratospheric balloon, 2021.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new era of collaboration for the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) for the Mir station was ushered in. Starting in 1994, Fortis became the official Cosmonauts chronograph. Not to be outdone, Omega developed the Speedmaster “MIR” (Special Edition), a special series of 35 watches that spent 365 days on the space station (1993–1994) to study the effects of long-term weightlessness on the movements.
The commercialisation of space was, in a sense, predicted by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Pan Am flights departed the space station towards Earth, IBM provided computer displays and instrument panels and Hilton Hotels was part of Space Station V. Hamilton was the wristwear of choice by astronaut Frank Poole.
Privatisation of the manned (crewed) space programme began in the early 2000s, with significant legislative backing in 2004 and true operational capability achieved in 2020. American businessman Dennis Tito was the first self-funded space tourist in 2001, paying for a seat on a Russian Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Richard Garriott (far right) on board the ISS wearing the Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk, specially designed for him. Garriott’s father, an astronaut himself, went to space with a Seiko in 1973 as part of the Skylab 3 crew.
As far as watch brands were concerned, it was the sixth space tourist, Richard Garriott, who, in October 2008, wore a specially designed watch, a Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk, during his 12-day stay aboard the Soyuz TMA-13, which docked with the ISS. The watch was later worn on EVAs by professional astronauts.
Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne (now Virgin Galactic) became the first privately funded and flown human spaceflight on 21 June, 2004. Later that year, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 was signed, creating the legal framework for the commercial human spaceflight industry.
After the implementation of the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 allowing private citizens to explore and exploit space resources, NASA formally shifted from in-house development of crew vehicles to partnering with private companies (SpaceX and Boeing) for ISS transport.
In 2021, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic launched their first commercial space tourism flights. Since then, there has been a proliferation of private companies developing space hardware and launching it into Earth’s orbit or beyond, among them Prada with Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines and Columbia Sportswear and Varda Space Industries with Rocket Lab.
Left: Omega Speedmaster X-33 Gen 2, the only NASA-issued watch for space flight in the Artemis II mission.
Right: Artemis II pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch after splashdown wearing their Speedmaster X-33.
Watch companies are now increasingly working with private space enterprises. Omega has agreements with Privateer and ClearSpace, both of which deal with the problem of increasing space debris in Earth’s orbit, alongside Axiom Space, to supply new timepieces to private astronauts in the ISS. Omega worked with the ESA (European Space Agency) in developing the Speedmaster Skywalker X-33 in 2014 and its current line-up – which includes the Skywalker and the Marstimer – is heavily supported by ESA testing and certification for mission use.
Not only that, Omega Speedmaster watches remain the only “flight-qualified” chronographs by NASA for over 60 years.
This year the horological space race has heated up with the Artemis II crew wearing, at various times, three different watches: either the traditional Omega Speedmaster or the Omega X-33 Gen 2 and on occasion, a Breitling Navitimer Cosmonaute. However, the official one was the Omega Speedmaster X-33 Gen 2, issued by NASA, and therefore, the only qualified timepiece for the mission.
With the Breitling Navitimer B02 Cosmonaut Artemis II, the Swiss manufacturer has gone back to space for the first time since 1962. IWC has joined forces with VAST (a firm looking to build a private space station) to provide space-proof watches.
Other watch companies have enrolled in the space race. Following Omega partnership with AXIOM Space – the company planning to build the world’s first commercial space station – IWC has joined forces with VAST – also competing for top of the podium with its Haven-1 – producing a watch named Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive. Despite its futuristic aesthetics, at the heart of the watch lies calibre 32722, part of IWC’s broader 32000 family of in-house movements, which features silicon components, a bidirectional pawl-winding system, and a 72-hour power reserve. British manufacturer Bremont is working with Astrolab, to test if its new Supernova Chronograph can live on the moon inside the Astrolab FLIP rover as part of Moon Mission; but nobody is going to be there to check it.
What is clear from the last seven decades of watches being worn or tested beyond the confines of Earth is that a mechanical watch movement is perfectly capable of surviving the extremes of space, which opens the gates of a whole new universe of wrist candy.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
This is a reduced version of the full feature available in the 2026 edition of I-M TIME. Get your copy for just £4.25, HERE.
Lead image: Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean on the suface of the Moon wearing his Omega Speedmaster ref. 105.012. Picture taken by Charles Conrad. November 1969. © NASA / Charles Conrad.
We’d like to thank Richard Garriott for kindly allowing us to use his private shot aboard the ISS in this feature and in the 2026 edition of I-M TIME (available HERE).
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