This week has seen two very different ‘collaboration’ announcements involving celestial space matters.

One of these is the news that Prada will collaborate with Axiom Space, architect of the world’s first commercial space station, the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), to design and produce NASA’s lunar spacesuits for the Artemis III mission in 2025. It will be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972 and also the first for a woman.

If you are wondering about what Prada will be doing, they say that the brand will assist with materials and design features. Whether or not there will be any accompanying commercially-oriented ‘inspired by’ items in 2025 remains to be seen. If you want to read more about it, go to this site.

The second space-oriented announcement is to do with Swatch, who have a new project with the European Space Agency (ESA) as a part of their ‘Swatch X You’ customisation range. There are six images provided by the ESA as a canvas onto which you can ‘place’ your 41mm sized watch according to what portion of the skies you want on which part of your watch, after which you can decide on which of the three variants (materially) you want of the movement. The final customisation is the ability to put text (up to fifteen characters) on the back of the watch.

The four images provided by the ESA are as follows –

1. NGC 3324 – in the Carina Nebula.
2. Liller 1 – a cluster 30,000 light years from Earth within the Milky Way.
3. Pillars of Creation – perhaps the most well-known image of the options, in the Eagle Nebula 6,500 light years away.
4. Protostar L1527 – as the name says, it’s a young star, surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust.
5. Lagoon Nebula – the image chosen is part of this nebula which is fifty-five light years wide and twenty light years tall, if you can get your head around that.
6. Veil Nebula – In the Cygnus constellation and 2,100 light years from Earth.

The two images here are just two examples that I came up with.

Each customised watch comes with an ESA-branded loop on the strap, a special sleeve, and a postcard featuring the space telescope image used for your chosen design.

This ESA special was launched in conjunction with World Space Week (this week) and will be available until 17 December 2023. With an Australian price of $210, you can have a play with the configurator and/ or get it it at this link.

[Photo credit: Swatch]

Categories: Swatch, Watch Profile, watches, Women's watches