OMEGA Speedmaster 38: The Space-Born Icon Enters Its Most Sophisticated Era

Florida, October 1968. The countdown reaches zero at Cape Kennedy’s Launch Complex 34, and a Saturn IB rises into the morning sky, carrying three men into history. 

Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham are aboard Apollo 7, NASA’s first crewed Apollo mission: an 11-day orbital proving ground for the spacecraft that would soon carry humanity towards the Moon. 

For 10 days, 20 hours, nine minutes and three seconds, Apollo 7 circles Earth 163 times. And strapped to the astronauts’ wrists is a machine whose own destiny is becoming inseparable from theirs: the OMEGA Speedmaster. 

There is something almost cinematic about that image: the blue planet turning beneath them, television cameras transmitting the first live American spacecraft broadcasts into homes around the world, and a mechanical chronograph quietly measuring time in the middle of the greatest technological adventure of the age.

The Speedmaster had not yet become the Moonwatch. But history was already tightening its grip around the name.

Fifty-eight years later, that mythology remains remarkably intact. Indeed, the new OMEGA Speedmaster 38 mm collection demonstrates why.

Seven new references refine the smaller Speedmaster without diluting its formidable personality. The most consequential changes are deceptively restrained: the former oval subdials are now rounded, giving the chronograph a sharper, sportier stance; dial wording has been reduced for greater visual clarity; and the bezel returns to a thicker profile incorporating the legendary Dot-Over-Ninety detail associated with the Moonwatch. 

Each model arrives on a five-link, Moonwatch-style bracelet, with polished or brushed central links according to the reference. 

This is intelligent evolution rather than nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. The 38 mm proposition has always occupied an intriguing position within the Speedmaster universe: more compact and dress-conscious than the traditional Moonwatch, yet unmistakably cut from the same celestial cloth. Now, OMEGA has pulled the family resemblance closer.

As Raynald Aeschlimann, President and CEO of OMEGA, puts it: “The Speedmaster 38 mm has always taken its cues from the Moonwatch, while keeping size, colour, and simplicity in mind. With this latest update, we’ve taken the Moonwatch inspiration even further, helping to enrich the Speedmaster DNA while still retaining the refined and unique nature that the 38 mm range is known for.” 

The palette is particularly persuasive. The steel-on-steel trio begins with the most traditionally Speedmasterian expression: a matt black varnished dial, black aluminium bezel and white Super-LumiNova-filled hands and indexes, powered by the self-winding Co-Axial Calibre 3332. 

The white-dial version introduces a blue ceramic bezel with a white-enamel tachymeter scale and blue CVD-coated hands and indexes. A warmer silvery model pairs an opaline silvery PVD dial with a warm-grey aluminium bezel, Sedna™ Gold PVD hands and luminous baton indexes. 

Then comes the more rakish bicolour territory. Stainless steel meets polished 18K Moonshine™ Gold in a silvery-opaline version whose green aluminium bezel and yellow-gold tachymeter scale create an unusually sophisticated sporting combination. 

Its bracelet incorporates small links in Moonshine™ Gold. The ivory “cappuccino” interpretation is warmer still, juxtaposing brown subdials and a brown aluminium bezel ring with a polished 18K Sedna™ Gold bezel and Sedna™ Gold bracelet links. 

For collectors who believe a chronograph should occasionally sparkle, two diamond-set references add 52 diamonds to the bezel, totalling 1.53 carats. One combines the stones with an ice-blue PVD dial; the other uses white mother-of-pearl. Rhodium-plated hands and luminous baton indexes prevent either from drifting into mere jewellery territory. They remain, fundamentally, Speedmasters. 

Mechanically, six date-equipped references use OMEGA’s self-winding Co-Axial Calibre 3330, while the black no-date model receives Calibre 3332. The distinction is significant: this is not simply a case of resizing an existing icon, but a carefully differentiated collection in which mechanical specification and aesthetic character are deliberately paired. 

To understand why that matters, one must go back to 1957. The original Speedmaster was conceived not for astronauts but for motor racing, a robust chronograph designed around the demands of measuring elapsed time at speed. 

Its tachymeter scale was moved from the dial to the bezel — a small but revolutionary decision that made the watch instantly legible and established the visual grammar that collectors recognise today.

Then came space.

Walter Schirra wore his personal Speedmaster during Sigma 7 in 1962. NASA subsequently subjected commercially available chronographs to punishing tests before selecting the Speedmaster for its manned space programme in 1965. 

The watch survived extreme temperature variation, shock, vibration and other trials that destroyed competing candidates. The Smithsonian records that the Speedmaster was selected after rigorous testing for precision and reliability. 

Apollo 7 consequently became another chapter in that extraordinary ascent. Cunningham’s NASA-issued Speedmaster, for example, remains preserved by the Smithsonian. The following year, Apollo 11 transformed the watch into legend. 

Buzz Aldrin wore his Speedmaster on the lunar surface, while Neil Armstrong’s remained inside the Lunar Module because the spacecraft’s electronic timing equipment had failed. The Speedmaster subsequently became inseparable from NASA’s human-spaceflight narrative — most dramatically during Apollo 13, when precise timing became a matter of survival.

And yet the Speedmaster has never belonged solely to engineers, astronauts or horological obsessives. That is its secret.

It migrated effortlessly from the cockpit to the cinema, from NASA photographs to red carpets and modern menswear. Tom Hanks wore one portraying Jim Lovell in Apollo 13; George Clooney has repeatedly worn Speedmasters both on and off screen; Ryan Reynolds brought the watch into The Adam Project.  

The result is a rare luxury object that can signify scientific achievement, Hollywood sophistication and quietly assured personal style without changing its fundamental identity.

That is precisely why the new Speedmaster 38 mm feels so timely. It does not attempt to outshout the Moonwatch. It understands that true icons require no such theatrics. 

Instead, OMEGA has sharpened the proportions, edited the dial, enriched the materials and expanded the palette while preserving the essential architecture of a chronograph that has travelled from racetracks to Earth orbit and ultimately to the lunar surface.

For the serious collector, that continuity is the point. The new Speedmaster 38 mm is not merely another chapter in OMEGA’s catalogue. 

It is a remarkably wearable distillation of one of modern watchmaking’s greatest stories — compact enough for contemporary life, substantial enough for posterity, and still carrying, beneath its polished surfaces, the audacity of a machine once trusted to keep time where time itself seemed almost to disappear. 

The new Speedmaster 38 mm Collection by OMEGA retails from RM 28,550 and is available now in all OMEGA boutiques and authorised OMEGA Watch retailers worldwide. 

*Photos courtesy of OMEGA.