Even more than 50 years after the Moonwatch myth was born, the Swiss watch manufacturer Omega Replica clearly still has a hot line to the US space program and NASA: The Omega X33 is a permanent piece of equipment for astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley on board the Crew Dragon capsule, which was successfully catapulted into space by the Falcon 9 launch vehicle on May 30, 2020. Almost 2 million viewers watched NASA’s live stream.

Omega X33 meets SpaceX: Demo-2 mission

The US space agency NASA has announced the launch of the SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2, or SpX-DM2 or SpaceX Demo-2 for short, with much fanfare. No wonder: The US program for manned space travel was discontinued almost 10 years ago for cost reasons – the space shuttle Atlantis was the (for now) last US space shuttle to launch into space from Cape Canaveral (after a total of 135 missions). After that, NASA mothballed its space shuttle fleet.

The cancellation was not entirely surprising: NASA knew that the chances of a fair-weather launch were not particularly good. Nevertheless, NASA wanted to try it, as there are only very narrow time windows in which the crew can dock with the ISS – logical, after all, the ISS is not a fixed point in space, but travels in a circular orbit at eight kilometers per second. Or in other words: the spacecraft can miss the ISS if the launch from Cape Canaveral begins too early or too late. Good timing is the be-all and end-all (this also explains the “odd” planned launch times).

The decisive factor for the resumption of the space program was SpaceX, a private company: none other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk is opening his wallet wide when it comes to exploring space. Elon Musk is known as a visionary – or (depending on how you look at it) as the spirit of bizarre tech fantasies. For example, Musk wants to build hyperloop tubes that can transport passengers underground at up to 1,200 km/h. Musk also has ambitious plans for space exploration: in around 20 years there will even be the first SpaceX city on Mars.

Omega X33 on board the SpaceX Dragon capsule

On the Demo-2 mission, the two NASA astronauts can look forward to Omega watches: The Omega X33 is issued as an official piece of equipment as part of the SpaceX Demo-2 mission – but after returning to Earth, the watches must be returned (after all, the astronauts don’t take their spacesuits home with them either 😉 ). However, Omega offers the pilots an X33 with a personal engraving.

But let’s take a quick look at the creation of the X33: the hybrid model with digital LCD and analogue display was actually created completely “from the drawing board” based on NASA’s requirements. The US space agency formulated requirements in terms of robustness, for example, but also in terms of time measurement options (more on that in a moment). Because in space, things always have to be “timed”, for example docking with the ISS, closing the airlock, the maximum duration of space walks (EVA, extra-vehicular activity), etc.