The Mission To Earthphase Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch Is a World-First

Johnny Davis
·2-min read
a closeup view of a smartwatch dial featuring unique lunar graphics
The New MoonSwatch Boasts a World-FirstSwatch

Want more watch coverage? Get About Time, Esquire’s free newsletter devoted to the watch world, in your inbox every Sunday. Sign up here

“Mission to my wallet”

“🔥 The next Mission to eBay?? 😂 😂”

“Shut up and take my money”

The comments under this week’s Instagram Swatch teaser have spoken – a new MoonSwatch is with us.

But the 27th Omega x Swatch collab since this all began just two years ago does actually have something new to offer.

The headline being that this is “the most complicated MoonSwatch ever made”.

swatch
Swatch

“Complications” in watch language are anything above and beyond the basic functions that tell the time – so, a world timer is a complication, as is an alarm.

In the case of the new Mission to Earthphase, this is the first watch (of any kind!) to feature an “earthphase” function.

Swatch even has a patent for it.

You may be getting ahead of us here, but what this means is that as well as a more usual moonphase indicator – a function that shows the current phase of the moon, such as a new moon or a full moon, on a watch’s sub-dial, as Swatch already introduced in March with the Omega x Swatch Mission To Moonphase MoonSwatch (Snoopy) – the new watch shows the position of the Earth, as viewed from the moon.

omega x swatch moonswatch wristwatch
Swatch

Says Swatch: “Both the moon and the Earth take approximately 29.5 days to go through all their phases, but in reverse order. This means that, for instance, when we see a full moon from Earth, an observer on the moon would see a “new Earth,” and vice versa. This is also why the earthphase turns in the opposite direction to the moonphase”.

Yes, it’s safe to assume that anyone who owns this watch will be inhabiting planet Earth so while this function might be a world-first, it’s also somewhat useless – but that's nothing new in watches.

(When did you last see someone use the chronograph function to time motorsport?)

For another point of difference on this model, the rotating Earth is the only part of the watch rendered in colour, with the oceans coated with UV ink that glows blue under UV light.

Meanwhile, as per the Snoopy moonphase, the two moons at 2 o’clock are coated with SuperLumiNova and glow in the dark.

This watch has a light grey colour scheme across its case, crown and pushers, matched by a grey dial with a grainy texture, said to resemble the lunar surface.

It costs £288, and is available from select Swatch stores from 2 November.

You know the drill.

More details here.

You Might Also Like

Latest stories

  • Every Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch, Ranked

    Yes, all 28 of them

  • 'I nearly died of a ‘widow-maker’ heart attack. I had to change my approach to food as a chef’

    Michelin-starred chef Sat Bains tells Yahoo UK how he hopes his new heart-healthy cookbook will help others eat better.

  • Remember the ‘alien’ signal sent by Mars orbiter? It’s just been decoded

    What coded message conveys is still up for debate and discussion

  • U.S. Navy 'flipping' ship upcycled for ocean exploration

    STORY: This unique 'flipping' ship has been saved from the scrap heap, giving it a second life to continue its marine research.The ship called Flip is capable of rotating from horizontal to vertical.Half ship, half submarine, Flip is 355 feet long.It can sink more than 295 feet of its hull vertically in less than 30 minutes by taking on hundreds of tons of water and returns to the horizontal by expelling the water using compressed air.Here is Flip's captain, Giulio Maresca.“Flip was intended to be scrapped, to be cut in pieces. So we literally save from death this amazing piece of history."When vertical the vessel has unparalleled stability even in the roughest seas, making it an ideal platform to study wave dynamics, sound propagation, and oceanography.:: Scripps Institute of Oceanography, UC San DiegoOriginally built for the U.S. Navy in 1962 to carry out acoustic research, Flip - which stands for Floating Instrument Platform - was decommissioned last year.But an ocean engineering company brought the ship to Europe. Tom Hutton from DEEP hopes to see it at work again refitted with the latest technology.“We want to create a platform that is versatile but also has modern requirements for the power, modern technology for communication, and will allow the very latest technologies to be deployed in this otherwise austere environment."The company has built a 3D-printed habitat called Sentinel on the ship.That will hopefully allow crew members to live comfortably underwater at depths of up to around 650 feet for up to 28 days at a time. "The vessel behind me, as you can see, is of an age. It's from the 1960s and a lot of the technology on board was also from that era, even though it has been a platform to support a lot of, you know, really important innovation and science and technology and marine research since then."The refitting will take place over the next 18 months at a shipyard in the south of France.

  • Mysterious Viking burial shaped like stone boat discovered

    Area was likely home to village that expanded vastly 1,200 years ago, researchers suspect

  • 4,000-year-old town discovered hidden in Arabian oasis

    The discovery of a 4,000-year-old fortified town hidden in an oasis in modern-day Saudi Arabia reveals how life at the time was slowly changing from a nomadic to an urban existence, archaeologists said on Wednesday.These discoveries reveal a process of "slow urbanism" during the transition between nomadic and more settled village life, the study said.

  • Decrepit Voyager 1 Probe Runs Into Trouble Again

    Radio Silence The Voyager 1 probe just refuses to die. But ye olde spacecraft has had some scares during its 47 year journey and counting, and NASA engineers are constantly checking in to make sure it doesn't kick the bucket. Recently, the space agency announced that it had to perform an intervention to reestablish contact […]

  • 'Halloween comet' breaks apart after flying close to the sun

    A recently discovered comet that some stargazers had hoped to see during Halloween week has disintegrated before the day of ghosts and ghouls. NASA confirmed Tuesday its sun-observing spacecraft captured the moment when the comet Atlas broke into chunks this week as it passed close to the sun. Astronomers have been tracking the so-called Halloween comet, also known as C/2024 S1, since it was discovered in September by a telescope in Hawaii.

  • Archaeologists discovered a hidden Maya city with huge pyramids 'by accident'

    The scientists found evidence of a stunning 6,674 Maya structures

  • NASA Solar Sail Spacecraft Damaged, Spinning Through Space

    Still Tumbling NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), a dazzling spacecraft that is designed to exclusively make use of the tiny amounts of radiation pressure exerted by sunlight for propulsion, is still spinning through space uncontrollably. In an update last week, the space agency admitted that the solar sail is "still slowly tumbling" in […]

  • Giant rats trained to sniff out smuggled ivory and rhino horn

    A spaniel’s nose has long been used to catch smugglers and contraband, but scientists have now found an unusual replacement for the traditional sniffer dog.

  • Rare 4,000-year-old copper dagger unearthed at ‘promising’ Italian cave

    Presence of diverse materials from different eras in cave suggests it was frequented for millennia

  • Scientists decode when and how kissing evolved in humans – and it’s gross

    Behaviour likely emerged from early humans sucking lips to remove parasites while grooming, researchers say

  • Ranked: The most terrifying extinct animals that once roamed our planet

    From fearsome land mammals to deadly sea creatures, we rank the most terrifying animals that once roamed Earth.

  • Bibby Stockholm changed to ‘ghost town’ as asylum seekers leave ship – resident

    John, not his real name, said ‘everyone was happy’ that the barge accommodation was shutting down so other people will not have to experience it.

  • Students discover and publish unexpected proof for 2,000-year-old mathematical theory

    Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson have published a paper on a new way to prove the 2000-year-old Pythagorean theorem. Their work began in a high school math contest.

  • Lost Mayan city discovered under Mexican jungle by accident

    A lost Mayan city, complete with pyramids and a ball court, has been discovered buried deep under the Mexican jungle.

  • Earth is becoming ‘increasingly uninhabitable,’ scientists warn

    Extreme climate events and rising temperatures are threatening Earth’s inhabitants, ecosystems, and infrastructure with severe consequences

  • Three-person crew blasts off for China's Tiangong space station

    Three Chinese astronauts including the country's only woman spaceflight engineer blasted off on a "dream" mission to the Tiangong space station in the early hours of Wednesday.She is the third Chinese woman to take part in a crewed mission.

  • Residents stunned to see Elon Musk's Starlink - with another chance to see it TONIGHT

    People around East Lancashire were baffled by an unusual line of lights across the sky on Thursday night, as Elon Musk’s latest project was spotted across the county.