Omega, who have enjoyed a long term association with NASA, and whose watches were worn by the Apollo XI crew on the first lunar landing in 1969, managed a further coup some six years later. They managed to get both the American and the Russian space crews to wear Speedmaster X-33 watches when the USA launched the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) Command Module and the Soviet Union sent Soyuz 19 into space in 1975.
On July 17, 1975, astronaut Lieutenant General Thomas P. Stafford (USA) and cosmonaut Lieutenant General Alexei A. Leonov (USSR) met in the docking hatch which linked their respective spacecraft.
So to commemorate 35 years of the launch of the timepiece, Omega has launched the Omega Speedmaster Professional Apollo-Soyuz “35th Anniversary” chronograph. The chronographs will sport a black meteorite dial with silver sub-dials and a rhodium-plated outer ring.
The dial has been created from a meteorite which survived its entry into earth’s atmosphere and the resulting high-speed impact. The meteorite’s unusual structure is the result of the extremely high temperatures it was subjected to followed by a period of cooling.
The dial is a single piece cut from the meteorite; accordingly, because no two pieces of the meteorite are exactly alike, each watch in this limited edition is absolutely unique. The black colour of the meteorite dial is the result of a surface oxidation process. The silvery seconds hand and chronograph counters appear in the meteorite’s natural colour.
You’re going to have to move like a space rocket if you want to get your hands on one; this stunning watch is a limited edition version of only 1,975 pieces.
