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- British independent Diatom has introduced five watches inspired by Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon and Mars for its ‘Inner Worlds’ collection.
- Each model incorporates historic spaceflight material or particles from lunar or Martian meteorites, with Diatom launching every finished watch above 120,000 feet.
- The Inner Worlds collection uses Swiss ETA 2892-A2 automatic movements, with only 450 examples of each model, all priced at AUD $4,271.
Captain’s log: Bell & Ross sent a tiny spaceplane around its dial, Alexey Yakushik recreated Yuri Gagarin’s historic orbit, and Breitling brought its astronaut-inspired Cosmonaute back into the permanent collection. Belfast watchmaker Nomadic stuck to the shipyards, but British independent Diatom is taking us beyond the spacecraft, breaking free from orbit and hurtling us toward worlds beyond, with a quintet of watches inspired by five celestial bodies in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon and Mars.
And they’re not just a bunch of colourful dials. Across the new Inner Worlds collection, each watch contains material from historic space missions or actual lunar and Martian meteorites. The dials are precision-embossed and coated in multiple enamel layers thinner than 10 microns.
Founded by aerospace engineers Dr Chris Rose and Dr Alex Baker, the independent brand says it launches every finished watch over 120,000 feet into the air, with footage recorded for its owner. It’s technically near-space rather than outer space, but still, how many $4,000 watches can claim they’ve been to space?
Diatom Sends Every Watch to Near-Space
Diatom’s space launches require a fair bit more than strapping a watch to a weather balloon. Diatom mounts its watches inside a custom-built carbon-fibre craft fitted with cameras, telemetry equipment and a flight computer that communicates with Diatom HQ. A lighter-than-air system carries them above 120,000 feet, where onboard cameras capture the watches against Earth’s curvature and thin blue atmosphere.
Once the craft reaches altitude, Diatom says it’s remotely detached from the lifting system via satellite uplink for a controlled descent. Upon landing, the flight computer broadcasts its coordinates for recovery, and the watches undergo post-flight quality checks. Owners also receive ultra-high-definition footage of their watches making the trip.
Diatom’s Inner Worlds flight record shows a batch of watches numbered 01–25 reaching 124,927 feet, with temperatures dropping below −65°C and atmospheric pressure falling below 1 per cent of sea level. Even that high up above our pale blue dot, you’re still a long way short of the roughly 1.26 billion-foot distance between here and the Moon. Few watches get this kind of send-off before they’ve even reached their owners.
Diatom Inner Worlds Collection – Key Specs
- Edition: 450 pieces per model
- Case diameter: 39.5 mm
- Lug to lug: 48 mm
- Thickness: 9.35 mm
- Lug width: 20 mm
- Case & Strap material: Stainless steel 316L
- Movement: Space-tested Swiss ETA 2892-A2 automatic, 42-hour power reserve
- Crystal: Double-domed sapphire, anti-reflective coating
- Water resistance: 100 metres (10ATM)
- Price: AUD $4,271 per watch
The Five Inner Worlds of Our Solar System
1/5Mercury
Blue and gold streaks spread across Mercury’s dial, inspired by the planet’s battered surface. Behind it, the automatic movement’s custom rotor incorporates material from Liberty Bell 7, the NASA capsule that sank after its 1961 flight and was recovered 38 years later.
1/5Venus
Orange and grey enamel reflect Venus’ dense clouds and scorched surface. Its custom rotor contains magnesium-alloy skin recovered from a mission-flown Atlas-Agena rocket, the same class used to launch Mariner 2 towards Venus in 1962.
1/5Earth
Earth gets a bright blue, rippled dial inspired by water and reflected light. Inside the rotor is material from the Kapton thermal insulation of Odyssey, the Apollo 13 Command Module that brought its crew safely home in 1970.
1/6Moon
The Moon edition swaps bright colours for a charcoal-grey, crater-like surface. Unlike the first three watches, its unusual material choice appears on the dial: a fine coating containing particles from the NWA 11788 lunar meteorite.
1/5Mars
Mars is unmistakably the red one, with a rough, rust-coloured dial. Diatom applies a fine coating made from the NWA 13187 Martian meteorite, technically a shergottite, making this blend of rocket science and horological design more challenging than getting the colour right.
Which World Would You Wear?
All five Inner Worlds watches share the same case, movement and AUD $4,271 price tag, so the biggest decision is which piece of space history you’d like on your wrist. Whichever you choose, whether it’s our lunar buddy or a coup with the Martians, you’ll still get to watch footage of the watch’s 120,000-foot high-altitude trip, then boast at the pub about your space-faring watch.
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