National Air and Space Museum - June 27, 2025

60 Years Since NASA Qualified the Omega Speedmaster

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National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum
A watch photographed against a dark background

June marks the 60th anniversary of NASA’s announcement that the Speedmaster was space qualified for human spaceflight. These chronograph watches have performed exceedingly well outside the spacecraft, from Ed White's first American spacewalk on Gemini IV, to the most recent spacewalks by Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers in 2025. The Smithsonian’s collection of chronographs includes 63 Omega Speedmasters and Speedmaster Professionals, the vast majority of which arrived at the Museum in the mid-1970s following the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

In the spring of 1977, 55 chronographs were offered to and formally accepted by National Air and Space Museum curators. Documents also reflect the arrival of the hand-carried shipment.
Astronaut wearing a watch while inside of a spacecraft.

Buzz Aldrin wearing his Omega Speedmaster watch on Apollo 11.

As the current Museum curator for astronaut chronographs, Jennifer Levasseur has served as their caretaker since late 2009. Through the opportunity to undertake a conservation project with the Omega Museum from 2013 to 2018, she sought to understand their greater significance to the material culture of astronaut life in space and the wearers of them in their work at NASA.
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