Spacewatches: The Right Watches For Space Travel

With two big name watches from two big named watch manufacturers vying larger pieces of the pie (or slices from two different pies), its no wonder that people are miscued about spacewatches –against the regular, heavy duty, durable, and long lasting timepieces. But frankly, there are no differences between both types.

The term was born out of NASA’s folly during the procedures of Project Gemini. With the project coming to realization, it was only when NASA found out that they had not considered a wristwatch suitable to travel in space. Normal procedures for soliciting space equipment would consume too much time: the bidding for design, the bidding for the manufacturer, the tests. NASA instead opted to scour the existing market for the most reliable wristwatch, of course without the awareness of the general public or to the watch manufacturers.

Chosen were 5 brands of wristwatches, all chronographs as the feature to measure time lapses efficiently is important to scientific study, and all manual wound as it was still unspecified if the absence of gravity can render ineffective the self-winding mechanism of automatic watches. The watches were from Rolex, Breitling, Bulova, Longines, TAG Heuer, all of which failed –and shockingly for TAG Heuer as it was recently acclaimed as the first timepiece in space when astronaut John Glenn used a TAG Heuer watch while piloting the Mercury Atlas 6 spacecraft.

The last watch, an Omega Speedmaster, was the only one to pass all the tests. These include the expected space conditions like vacuum and extreme temperature exposure, as well as additional durability tests like intense humidity, corrosion, shock, acceleration, pressure, vibration and noise. Some of the watches withstood the tests, however the Omega Speedmaster was the only one that continued operation without serious inconsistencies other survivors had encountered. At this point, NASA then adopted the Omega Speedmaster as the “Officially Certified Wristwatch for All Manned Space Missions”, giving birth to the term spacewatches and made Omega the precursor watch manufacturer that made spacewatches.

Zero gravity is not, by the way, detrimental to a watch’ processes, but the extreme conditions are. That’s the reason why spacewatches, like the Omega Speedmaster are constructed strong and reliable. In fact, aside from the Omega Speedmaster, the Breitling Navitimer Cosmonaute was also worn for the May 24, 1962 space procedure in the Aurora 7 mercury capsule by US astronaut Scott Carpenter. The Fortis B-42 is also another spacewatches used by Soviet astronauts. Chinese aeronauts use the Fiyta spacewatches.