Bangalore Watch Company tests its apogee wrist watch in Space, prototype travels 35 km into Earth's atmosphere
Bangalore Watch Company has announced it has successfully tested an Apogee wristwatch in Space in pursuit of what it called producing world-class watches that tell stories from modern India.
The prototype watch completed a Stratospheric flight by travelling 114,000 feet (35 kilometers) into the Earth’s atmosphere and returned safely to Earth in full working condition, the company said in a press release.
“We launched the Apogee collection in 2021 as a celebration of the Indian space program. Since then, the Apogee has taken the moniker of ‘the Indian space watch’. We didn’t want to stop at creating watches that were merely inspired by Space. We wanted to see if we could build them to be qualified and tested for space”, said Mercy Amalraj, co-founder of Bangalore Watch Company.
“Space is an unforgiving environment. There is no gravity, no oxygen, and extremely low temperatures. Automatic watches are usually built for use under normal circumstances, but testing our watches in Outer space and seeing if they’ll function normally, is a huge challenge. But that is exactly the type of challenge we wanted to take on and push the capability of the Apogee watch”, added Nirupesh Joshi, co-founder and Creative Director of the brand.
The company collaborated with a UK-based space-engineering firm to plan and conduct a stratospheric flight in early 2024. An ultra-light carbon-fibre spacecraft, carried by a high-altitude balloon, transported an Apogee watch to outer space, exposing it to the harsh environment of outer space.
