A Closer Look At The Bulova Lunar Pilot 50th Anniversary Limited Edition

NASA’s association with Bulova goes back to the 1950s when the agency first met with the brand to create watches, instrumentation panel clocks, and timekeeping mechanisms to help with their exploratory efforts. This partnership lasted until the ’70s, with NASA utilizing the brand’s innovative Accutron tuning fork movements to provide state-of-the-art precision timing.
 

Crafted for astronomical conditions, the original Lunar Pilot was initially only intended to track time so that no one on the mission ran out of oxygen, water, or battery power in the portable life-support-system backpack. But the Lunar Pilot was also used to back up the on-board timers for the critical re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. 
 

So, how did the Lunar Pilot get its day on the Moon?

While, officially, Omega Speedmasters were issued to all three astronauts aboard the Apollo 15, the crew was also allowed to bring some personal effects. David Scott brought along his Bulova.

Scott’s original Lunar Pilot was specially customized for lunar conditions by Bulova engineers and produced only as a prototype. And its story remained relatively unknown until Scott put it up for auction in 2015. That auction created a lot of buzz because it was the only known privately owned watch that had been on the Moon (the government-issued Omega Speedmasters are considered government property). 
 

So, even though it was not the officially issued timepiece, the Lunar Pilot made it to the surface of the Moon when the crystal popped off Scott’s Speedy. While there, it met the challenges of the changing atmospheric conditions, fluctuating temperatures, and gravitational shifts. 
 

The same year Scott put his Lunar Pilot up for auction, Bulova released a modern remake of the astronaut’s chronograph. It came with an exclusive high-performance quartz movement with a frequency of 262 kHz for precision timing, super-luminous hands and markers, anti-reflective sapphire glass, a tachymeter, and a calendar.
 

Six years on, Bulova is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 15 mission with another update. This time, the new watch has a special 45mm titanium grade-5 case with gold-tone accents and pushers. It’s a big watch, measuring 45mm in diameter, 13.5mm thick, and 52mm lug-to-lug, but the elegant silhouette and the inobtrusive crown and pushers mean that it doesn’t look too bulky. And its high-frequency quartz movement (accurate to about 10 seconds per year) makes it lighter than your average mechanical watch.