A secondary leather strap is supplied with the watch, both featuring quick-release pushpins to easily exchange the two. The Raketa Space Launcher limited editions come on a strap made from a Sokol spacesuit, as worn by all Cosmonauts during space missions. The movement has matte-finished bridges featuring printed constellations for decoration and a blue-coated rotor. It is regulated to run within -10/+20 seconds of deviation per day. The movement runs at a frequency of 18,000vph (2.5Hz) and provides 40 hours of running time when fully wound. The benefit of this system is also to reduce wear on the bearings and wheels in the winding module. This system disengages the winding rotor from the rest of the movement when the watch is wound manually, via the crown.
This automatic wound movement has a distinct feature to its construction designed to bypass the lack of gravity needed to spin the rotor when in space. Raketa is one of the few brands that develops, produces, assembles, and regulates almost everything in-house, even down to the hairspring. Powering the Raketa Space Launcher limited editions is the calibre 2624A, which is made in Raketa’s manufacture in Saint Petersburg and also used in the Baikonur. A two-tone day/night scale encircles the dial and completes the indications.
The scale for the seconds is printed on the inside of the sapphire crystal. This disc rotates clockwise, and a red finger indicates the seconds. The dial also shows a graphic display of Earth in the middle, set against a white background or the sparkly deep blue aventurine background. The 24-hour scale has large, applied numerals with Super-LumiNova. The hours and minutes are indicated by hands made to look like the ones on the control panel of Yuri Gagarin’s original spacecraft. When onboard the ISS, you experience 16 sunrises and sunsets over a 24-hour period, so it makes complete sense to use such a scale to try and keep a grip on the actual time. This specific Soyuz-2.1a took off on a mission to the International Space Station on 14 October 2020, with cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.īoth men were actively involved in the design of the Raketa Space Launcher and were adamant about the necessity of a 24-hour scale of the watch.
SOYUZ T LAUNCHER FULL
It is engraved with the rocket’s full name and cardinal markings. The continually bidirectional rotating bezel is made of metal from the Soyuz-2.1a rocket. The barrel-shaped steel case measures a sizeable 43mm in diameter, 13.15mm in height and 47mm from lug to lug. Aside from some other minor differences, the two are identical. 0281 uses a white dial and 0282 a dark blue aventurine dial. The difference between the two is quite simple: ref. The Raketa Space Launcher comes in two models, references 02. I imagine this is a genuinely life-changing experience. Just imagine being able to see our entire planet with your own eyes instead of through a picture. Regardless, these people are the only ones to have been able to look back at our planet. Raketa pays homage to the Russian-led missions and the iconic Soyuz space rocket with two Raketa Space Launcher Limited Editions.ĭid you know that – depending on which definition of “space” you follow – more than 600 people have been in space so far? This might sound like quite a lot, but considering the fact we’ve been sending people up there for over 60 years, it’s not all that many. First with unmanned space flight, then experimental flights with animals (touchy subject), and following Yuri Gagarin’s successful first mission in 1961, we have been sending people into space regularly. The limitless void of space has always drawn us, and since the 1960s, we have been dipping our toes in it from time to time. Since the dawn of humankind, we have been gazing up into the skies and wondering what’s out there.