#Nasa omega professional#

This mission was a follow up to Project Mercury, which landed the first Americans in space.Ī year after, NASA began their search for a reliable timepiece that astronauts can use in space and can serve as the official watch of the program. In 1963, the US government launched the Apollo program – a set of missions intended to land humans on the Moon and bring them back to Earth safely. Omega Speedmaster Vintage 321 Mens Watch 145.012įirst, let’s go back to how the Omega Speedmaster ended up on the wrists of NASA astronauts. Which Omega Speedmasters actually went to the Moon? Which models are those and which modern Moonwatches represent them best? Check out our quick guide to the original Moonwatches: For Omega purists and history buffs however, the only Moonwatches are those that actually went to the Moon. Today, one will find a wide selection of watches under Omega’s Moonwatch family. It was not just the Speedmaster anymore, but also the Moonwatch. While the Speedy has been a notable and reliable chronograph even before then, it became an icon and a bestseller ever since. Photographs by Stephen Lewis.Fifty-one years ago, on July 20, 1969, NASA Astronaut Buzz Aldrin stepped on the Moon with his Omega Speedmaster. I’m glad I made the effort, because I don’t think they would have taken them otherwise.Įxcerpted from A Man and His Watch by Matt Hranek (Artisan Books). I’ve got some from the Gemini days.” I sent them a list and they reconsidered my offer. I said, “Okay, these need to go to the Smithsonian, if they want them.”Īnd at first they didn’t want them! I said, “You guys are crazy - I’ve got all the watches that went around the moon. The best I recall it was about forty-four items in all. But at the end, I took every one that had any history to it at all and pulled them off to the side. Some of them burned up in the fire at Cape Canaveral, we lost some in airplane crashes, some were stolen, one or two ended up in the Banana River because the guys were water-skiing with them. I purchased a total of ninety-six Omegas from the day we started buying them to the end of Apollo. The watch was exact, and the rest is history. The commander’s chronograph was used to time the burn. Most critical was the last burn, which had to be a precise 14 seconds. The only things the astronauts had to time the critical burns to bring the Apollo 13 safely back to earth were their Omega Speedmasters.

#Nasa omega professional#

The best example of when the Omega Speedmaster Professional paid off for NASA was during the Apollo 13 mission, when all power was lost on the Command Module. These few adjustments made what we know today as the Speedmaster Professional Moonwatches. Exactly the same watch, except for some enhancements - including an asymmetrical case and, most important, protection for the crown and pusher so they wouldn’t bend and therefore need to be replaced each time. NASA kept using Speedmasters all through every moon landing, through Skylab days and Apollo-Soyuz. It was sheer coincidence that it was the same brand. Now, I didn’t know at the time that a pair of the watches that flew in the earlier Mercury days had been Omega Chronographs, but those had been bought personally by two of the astronauts, Wally Schirra and Gordo Cooper. When I was through with all the testing, the only watch that successfully passed all the tests was the Omega. I needed one set to give to the astronauts, one set for testing, and one set in case we screwed up somewhere and damaged the watch. So from each of the other three companies, we bought three watches. One of them was rejected outright because we had specified wrist-worn and it wasn’t - it was more like an Olympic timer. As a government entity, you can’t just go out and buy pieces of hardware and look at them - you have to do a competitive government procurement, unless there is justification to use a sole source. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know how much time was left on their suits before they ran out of oxygen. Mission control did the critical timing, but if they lost communication with the astronauts - like when they were out on the lunar surface - the astronauts needed watches as a backup. It was crucial for each astronaut to have a flight watch to time an event or experiment. I didn’t get to NASA until the start of the Gemini days, and watches were just one of many, many pieces I tested and procured as part of the flight equipment. So taken were we by this book, we asked Matt if it would be possible to republish a few of his interviews.

Ragan and his Omega Speedmasters Time+TideĮditor’s note: Matt Hranek’s now sold-out book, A Man and His Watch, is one of the real standouts of the watch year, a beautiful and thoughtful text, packed with 76 stories of watches and the people who wear them.