Feature: Which Speedmaster Is The Real Moonwatch?

You can’t blame Omega for bigging up the Speedmaster like a proud parent whose child has just scored a double first at Oxford University, won a gold medal at the Olympics and jumped into a frozen lake to save a drowning kitten.

We get it. It’s the only watch that’s ever been on the Moon, an astonishing feat that every other watch brand would sell their soul for. But does Omega really have to bring out quite so many variations of this iconic model?

A Speedmaster Moonwatch in rose gold with Moonphase

From skeleton dials in platinum cases to Snoopy-embossed limited editions, the Speedmaster comes in a dizzying array of permutations. And, make no mistake, they’re all excellent watches.

But if you’re dead set on wearing the model that a highly select band of NASA astronauts wore on the surface of the Earth’s satellite, there is only one Speedmaster Moonwatch model that fits the bill…

Technical Torture

The Omega Speedmaster, which had been introduced in 1957, passed NASA’s brutal barrage of tests in the 1960s—fending off competition from chronographs made by Rolex, Longines-Wittnauer and Hamilton. It was subsequently modified in preparation for the historic 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landings when Neil Armstrong became the first man on the Moon.

The first watch on the Moon was worn by astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Image: NASA

Famously, Armstrong, left his Speedmaster behind in the lunar module as back-up to a malfunctioning electronic timer. And so it was fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s model that became the first watch on the Moon—a Speedmaster Reference 105.012.

The mission’s third astronaut, Michael Collins, who didn’t leave the Columbia module that landed on the Moon’s surface, wore a Reference 145.012, which was modified with larger and longer pushers.

The ten other astronauts who have walked on the Moon during the six lunar landings since then wore either one of the two references mentioned above, or a Reference 105.003. To this day, these are the only three Speedmaster references that have graced Earth’s satellite with their presence.

Caliber 3-2-1, Lift Off!

What all these virtually identical models have in common however was the movement: the Caliber 321. This manual-winder was adapted from the 27 CHRO movement made in 1942 by Lemania, a well-respected chronograph manufacturer that joined SSIH (Societe Suisse pour L’Industrie Horlogere), the company formed by the merger of Omega and Tissot.

Omega improved a few details on the 27 CHRO, and installed it in its watches, including the first Speedmaster. Therefore, astonishingly, it was a watch with 1940s technology that accompanied those astronauts to the moon as late as the early 1970s.

Buzz Aldrin's Omega Speedmaster went mysteriously missing

A new movement, Caliber 861, premiered in 1968 and was still being used for the Speedmaster in the 1980s, but it was never used in the Speedmasters that landed on the Moon. And since then… well, there have been countless versions of the Speedmaster, complete with self-winding and manual-winding movements, as well as the introduction in some models of George Daniels’ ground-breaking coaxial escapement.

The Moonwatch Returns

In 2020 Omega brought back the Speedmaster Moonwatch powered by the manual Caliber 321, a watch that was a replica of the Reference 105.003 that NASA astronaut Gene Cernan wore when he walked on the Moon in 1972.

Cernan was the eleventh man to have achieved that feat, just ahead of the twelfth man Harrison Schmitt who was on the same Apollo 17 mission. But as Cernan was the last to re-enter the lunar module that took them back to their spacecraft, it was his footsteps that were the last to tread the Moon’s surface. There have been no landings since.

A 2019 model manual-wind Moonwatch, Reference 311.92.44.51.01.006

The re-released watch itself (Reference 311.30.40.30.01.001) is relatively faithful to the original, with a moderately sized 39.7mm case and some minor modernisations that enhance robustness and longevity. These include a ceramic inlay on the bezel replacing the aluminium scale and the pair of sapphire crystals covering the dial and exhibition caseback, previously covered by acrylic and steel.

The bracelet also reverts to the three-row steel version of the early models, unlike the later versions with five-row links.

The Speedmaster Still Used By NASA

Even today, the Omega Speedmaster is NASA’s preferred mechanical watch—an analogue back-up to its modern digital equipment and a token gesture to successful past missions, a good luck charm that must imbue astronauts with confidence when they wear it.

That said, the aforementioned 2020 Speedmaster with the Caliber 321 wouldn’t actually pass NASA’s tests today. Sapphire crystal can shatter under extreme low pressure, and so this modification would immediately disqualify it.

Were Buzz Aldrin and his ilk to fly to the Moon today they’d be wearing the NASA-certified Reference 311.30.42.30.01.005. With its plastic crystal, steel caseback and a Caliber 1861 movement that has its origins in the old Lemania from the 1940s, Buzz would approve.

The last man to wear a Speedmaster on the Moon was Gene Cernan

Oh, and if you’re wondering where Buzz Aldrin’s actual Moon watch is, you’d better get Indiana Jones on the, er, ‘case’.

It went missing while being delivered to Washington’s Smithsonian Museum in the early 1970s, and is almost certainly the greatest lost timepiece in horological history.

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