Watches in Space Exploration & Space Security

Humankind’s quest to explore the final frontier has always relied on the most cutting-edge technology, including mechanical and digital watches. 

After the successful launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 satellite on 04 October 1957, a sense of fear and panic spread across the Western world. If the Soviets beat the United States, which was then enjoying the fruits of a post-war economic boom, to space, then what else were they capable of?

But Eisenhower, who famously wore a 36mm yellow gold Rolex Datejust ref. 6305, was unfazed, nonchalantly claiming that the USSR’s perceived victory in space “does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota,” and that’s because the intelligence community knew well ahead of time about the Soviets’ capabilities, plans, and intentions. The launch of Sputnik itself wasn’t the problem; its success told us more about the long-range missile capabilities of the USSR. This was the bit that CIA and the NSC (National Security Council) were more concerned with. After all, in 1955, both nations had stated their intention to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth by the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958. 

To the public, the space race was about which global power could conquer space first; to the intelligence community, the space race was a nuclear arms race. 

Watches from the First Moscow Watch Factory commemorating the USSR’s successful launch of Sputnik, the opening salvo in the Space Race.

The success of Sputnik was widely celebrated, and a watch from the First Moscow Watch Factory was even created in its honor with a depiction of a satellite that orbited the Earth. The USSR is highlighted in red, marking its achievement. America was quick to respond with the creation of its own space agency. President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, and by October of that year, NASA, as we know it, was in full swing. Prior to NASA, the US had the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which proved inadequate when going up against the USSR. 

In addition to being the first to place a satellite in orbit, the USSR also put the first human being into space in April of 1961. Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for an entire rotation aboard the Vostok 1. On his wrist was a 33mm Sturmanskie with legible black markers against a white dial, typically issued to Soviet Air Force navigators. That watch is now on display at the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics. 

Early Space Watches of NASA: Mercury, Gemini, & Apollo

From then on, watches were an integral tool for space exploration. Every astronaut and cosmonaut would wear a watch during spaceflight and use it for a myriad of tasks, from timing burns in critical phases of flight to keeping track of what time it was on Earth, where the “Capsule Communicator,” or CAPCOM, the person who communicates directly with astronauts from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, was located. 

Carpenter wearing his Breitling Cosmonaute. (Watch Photo Credit: OnTheDash)

It’s important to note that, unlike diving or flying, there were no function-specific watches produced with space exploration in mind. Instead, existing watches were used to carry out the necessary duties of astronauts (and cosmonauts). One example of a pilot's watch being specifically modified for spaceflight belonged to the legendary Scott Carpenter, who had first seen the Breitling Navitimer on the wrists of Australian pilots during an unmanned Atlas launch as part of the Mercury program. RAAF pilots were issued the Navitimer at the time. This encounter led to Carpenter contacting the US distributor of Breitling to see if they could recommend some mission-specific modifications to the watch to meet his needs. Breitling answered the call and made Carpenter a unique Breitling Cosmonaute, with 24-hour indication instead of a 12-hour indication (meaning the hour hand would rotate around the dial once a day instead of twice a day), a wider bezel, and a simplified slide rule. 

Aboard the Aurora 7, Carpenter made three orbits around the earth, lasting 4 hours, 56 minutes, and 5 seconds with the Breitling Cosmonaute on his wrist. This was the first-ever known Swiss watch worn in space. The watch, a chronograph and not a dive watch, flooded when Carpenter had to spend three hours on an inflatable life raft attached to the Aurora 7 capsule after splashing down 250 miles from the planned site. The flooded watch went back to Breitling, who not only replaced Carpenter’s watch but ended up supplying the entire crop of Mercury astronauts with the model that Carpenter had specially modified for spaceflight. 

Carpenter’s flooded, mission-worn Cosmonaute is now part of Breitling’s archival collection. (Photo Credit: Breitling)

As NASA grew to understand just how critical watches in space were, Operations Director Deke Slayton was tasked with making a watch part of the astronauts’ issued equipment. For Mercury missions, American astronauts procured watches privately or from channels not necessarily tied to NASA, like Carpenter. That all changed with the Gemini missions. NASA purportedly ran tests on a number of watches, and the Omega Speedmaster is the watch they settled on after it passed the tests that both Rolex and Longines-Wittnauer did not at the time. 

Wally Schirra wore the Omega CK2998 into space aboard Mercury 8. (Photo Credit: NASA & Omega)

The Omega Speedmaster became flight-qualified in ‘65, but that wasn’t the first time it had been to space. Astronaut Wally Schirra wore the Omega Speedmaster CK2998 aboard Mercury 8 on 03 October 1962, making it the first time the Speedmaster was worn in space. Both that the CK2998 was the first Omega in Space, and the Speedmaster was flight-qualified in ‘65, have been mainstays in Omega’s marketing strategy for the last 61 years. There was, however, a semi-official “space watch” before the Speedmaster. 

From Project OXCART to Faith 7

The A-12 on display at CIA Headquarters—number eight in production of the 15 A-12s built—was the first of the operational fleet to be certified for Mach 3. To this day, no piloted operational jet aircraft has ever flown faster or higher. (Photo Credit: CIA)

It’s hard to miss the Lockheed A-12 on display at CIA Headquarters in Langley. After all, its very existence is owed to the Agency. It spawned the ever-popular SR-71, but it was the CIA that issued the brief for a U-2 successor that came in the form of the A-12 aerial reconnaissance platform. It was far ahead of its time, and it remains the fastest plane ever, at least publicly.

The pilots had the watch to match this tech-packed spyplane: The Bulova Accutron Astronaut. It was part of the very early crop of watches to use a battery, which was absolutely novel at the time. Not only did it use a battery, but it also utilized a tuning fork oscillator. This means there is no balance or balance spring like a traditional watch, but instead a fork that “vibrates” at 360 Hz that’s powered by a battery (and runs through a circuit). This means that it’s able to handle much higher G-loads and shocks, and thus, along with its American-made pedigree, is why the CIA issued pilots of the A-12 an Accutron Astronaut. 

A Bulova Accutron Astronaut from the late 1960s (Photo Credit: W.O.E.’s Personal Collection)

The Accutron Astronaut was a “space watch” even before it officially went to space. Pilots of the X-15 rocket plane wore the watch as part of their standard kit, and oftentimes they flew high enough to momentarily leave Earth’s atmosphere and enter space. The Accutron Astronaut officially went to space on the wrist of Gordon Cooper aboard Mercury 9 in the Faith 7 capsule. The story of the CIA, the X-15, the SR-71, and the Mercury programs hasn’t had the sort of marketing dollars behind it that other “space watches” have, but the watch’s ties to the CIA and NASA make the Accutron Astronaut one of the most important space watches to the W.O.E. community, although it’s not often highlighted. It was always destined to be a space watch by the very nature of its name, but it had to prove its worth on the X-15 and A-12 as well. 

The Omega Speedmaster & NASA 

Astronaut Ed White famously wore two Omega Speedmasters during the first-ever spacewalk by an American. (Photo Credit: NASA)

Once the Speedmaster was selected as the chronograph the astronauts would be equipped with following NASA’s testing; it was time to officially integrate the watch into the space program. Flight qualification meant that NASA ordered the watches directly from Omega, and these NASA watches received one important modification for space travel, a long velcro strap that allowed the watch to be worn over the space suit. 

The first flight the watch was flown on was Gemini 3, worn by astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young. On Gemini 4, Ed White famously wore two Speedmasters on his wrist to perform the first-ever spacewalk by an American. The first ever human to perform a spacewalk was Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, wearing a Poljot Strela watch (he was also known to wear an Omega flightmaster during training). 

Buzz MFing Aldrin wearing an Omega Speedmaster during the Apollo 11 mission. (Photo Credit: NASA)

The Speedmaster is inextricably tied to space because it’s been on almost every mission (in an official capacity) for the last six decades. But it’s the moon landing in 1969 that cemented its reputation as the “moonwatch”. Buzz Aldrin wore the Speedmaster when he first set foot on the moon after Armstrong. Omega even won a Silver Snoopy award, a distinction given by NASA to contractors to recognize outstanding achievements related to human flight safety or mission success. The chronograph function was famously used to time the 14-second burn to correct the course of the damaged lunar module on the return trip of Apollo 13. The electronic systems onboard had failed, forcing astronaut Jack Swigert to rely on his issued Speedmaster to track the burn time. Luckily, the crew made it back to earth safely, and the watch played a small but crucial role in making it back home. 

Microgravity & Automatic Watches

Astronaut William Pogue wearing his Seiko 6139. (Photo Credit: NASA & Wind Vintage)

For a long time, there was a misconception that in a microgravity environment (gravity is still present in space; it is not a true “zero-gravity” environment), the rotor of an automatic watch would continuously spin until it destroyed the “going train” of a watch, or that it wouldn't spin at all. “If there’s no gravity to slow it down, then wouldn’t it just spin forever?” or rather, “If there’s no gravity, would it even start rotating?” This is part of the lore around why only manually-wound watches were selected during NASA’s initial testing. 

As it turns out, a microgravity environment will not destroy an automatic watch, and it works just fine in space. Among the space watch nerd crowd, you’ll often hear the Seiko 6139, or “Pogue”, cited as the first automatic chronograph in space. While that distinction is factual, the Seiko model, an automatic chronograph, was used for the first time in space aboard the Skylab 4 mission in 1973; there is another automatic chronograph model that was also present aboard the same flight. The Skylab 4 crew consisted of  Commander Gerald P. “Jerry” Carr,  William Pogue, and Edward Gibson. Pogue wore his Seiko 6139, but Carr also took a chronograph to space. During a NASA oral history project, Carr came clean about the watch: 

"I was not supposed to be taking anything extra up, but I had this Movado, which was a self-winding watch, one of those with a little counterweight in it, and I was very curious to find out if the self-winding watch would still work in weightless environment or whether that weightless environment would inhibit the motion of that little counter-weight and keep it from being wound up."

Carr’s Movado made the trip to space on the astronaut’s ankle, marking the second time a mechanical chronograph ventured beyond Earth’s atmosphere. (Photo Credit: Hodinkee & NASA)

The watch was a Movado Datachron HS360, and at the time, bringing up personal effects was discouraged, and perhaps forbidden by NASA.

“We went in the suit room and began suiting up,” Carr recalled during the oral history project interview. “On my ankle, I carried a watch. I put a watch on my ankle.”

Alongside the Seiko “Pogue”, the Movado Datachron HS360 became one of the two first automatic chronographs in space. The most important revelation, however, is that these men had skirted the rules to use the empirical method to answer an important question: Do automatic watches work in space? 

Thanks to Pogue and Carr, we know they do.

Modern Space Watches

Astronaut Terry Virts wearing an Omega X-33 onboard the International Space Station. (Photo Credit: NASA & Analog:Shift)

These days, most astronauts receive a digital Omega X-33 from NASA, and there are special provisions made that allow them to buy the flown watch and engrave their name on the back as well. Dozens of watch brands have been represented in space, but most brands don’t make it part of their marketing strategy. Sinn, Audemars Piguet, TAG Heuer, Kobold, and even Longines have been in space. NASA isn’t the only space agency, and its rules don’t apply to everyone. 

Take the European Space Agency, for example. It was through the ESA’s Spacelab program aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle missions that the Sinn 140/142 made its way to space on the wrist of German astronaut Reinhard Furrer. Japanese astronaut Toyohiro Akiyama, the first ever Japanese citizen in space, wore a Tudor for his official astronaut portrait. While Omega is the obvious one that comes to mind, no singular watch brand can claim the realm of space as its own. Just about every major watch has had one of its watches go to space. Again, the data tells a different story than what watch marketing would have you believe. Just look at the database and sort by brand to get an understanding of what has actually been used in space. 

German astronaut Reinhard Furrer famously wore a Sinn 140 S onboard the STS-61-A mission in 1985. (Photo Credit: Analog:Shift & NASA)

The concept of a “space watch” is changing. With the proliferation of space exploration being led by the private sector following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, the notion of an issued space watch isn't what it once was. Although NASA still plays an outsized role in space exploration, it doesn’t impose the same rules around watches in space, instead leaving it up to the contractors that carry out a lot of the work. 

This often means that watches that travel to space now are privately purchased. It also means that private space corporations have turned to watchmakers to make their own “unit watches” or “mission watches” to mark an important mission, much in the same way military units do. In 2021, IWC produced the “Inspiration4” Pilot’s Chronograph in white ceramic, flown aboard the Falcon 9 rocket with an all-civilian crew. The privatization of space has become a new frontier for horological marketing efforts, ending the period of governmental agencies issuing watches to astronauts. 

In 2023, Saudi astronaut Ali Alqarni brought his Rolex GMT-Master II into space. (Photo Credit: Ali Alqarni)

The Space Force & Watches

For the first time in 73 years, a new branch of the military was created: The U.S. Space Force in 2019 under the National Defense Authorization Act. While the nomenclature and branding were new, the mission was not. The Space Force is officially tasked with protecting and defending American interests in space, but the mission has been around since the ‘40s, when space was identified as a domain worth dedicating resources in order to give America an edge on what would become the next battlefield decades later. Space and ballistic missile programs under the United States Army and the United States Navy had been set up in the wake of WWII, and the Air Force started the Western Development Division, which became the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division. These organizations laid the framework for what’s currently the United States Space Force. 

A Micromilspec watch created to honor the US Space Force. (Photo Credit: Micromilspec)

The Space Force conducted a watch-focused experiment in 2024. Garmin smartwatches—about 6,000 of them—were issued to Space Force troops. The idea was that the watch would track the users’ physical fitness levels and exercise, therefore eliminating the need for PT tests. The data collected from the smartwatches would be more detailed and useful than the binary nature of a pass/fail PT test. But we’ve seen what happens when smartwatches are compromised. Micromilspec recently released a watch reportedly “designed in collaboration with esteemed members of the United States Space Force,” and we have also heard rumors of a Space Force Tudor unit watch in the works…

Although the role of watches in space exploration has drastically changed over the decades, they’ll always serve as a poignant reminder that “to confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit”, as Hawking once said.

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