Bremont sends a watch to the moon’s surface

A multifaceted black ceramic bezel and three-piece sandwich-style case – a reworking of Bremont’s signature Trip-Tick construction – houses a chronometer-rated automatic chronograph movement made by Sellita, with a 62-hour power reserve.

The watch will be on board We stand Rover, scheduled to be launched as part of Astrobotic Griffin’s first mission Griffin-1 is expected to land at the moon’s south pole sometime in the second half of this year.

It’s a one-way mission: The rover will remain permanently on the moon’s surface, with the clock ticking as it roams the landscape. FLIP’s goals include reaching elevated positions on lunar terrain, collecting data on lunar dust accumulation, testing dust attenuation layers, and surviving a two-week lunar night in a hibernating state (which would be a first for an American rover).

As far as Brémont’s serious timekeeping statements are concerned, the mission is frankly symbolic. The watch will be placed vertically in a specially designed case within the FLIP chassis, between its front wheels. Only the watch head is included, which weighs 107 grams, is glued in place using a specialist compound, and its face is visible to high-resolution FLIP cameras. But sleep periods mean that the watch (whose mechanical movement is under normal circumstances driven by the movement of the wearer’s arm) will stop working once its 62-hour power reserve runs out.

When the FLIP moves again, its movement should – in theory – prompt the mechanism into action again. Despite the force of gravity being one-sixth that of Earth’s, the vehicle’s acceleration, pitch and pitch should cause the winding rotor to oscillate, albeit with less torque and efficiency than on Earth.

“I think the watch will run from time to time, but for short periods,” Serrato says. “We’ll learn along the way. But that’s what’s exciting — it draws us into a thought process that’s completely out of the ordinary. Just having it there is inspiring.” However, there’s no doubt that Bremont, just like other brands with any ties to the cosmos, will milk their newfound alien connection for all it’s worth.

The FLIP itself, which weighs just 1,058 pounds and carries a mix of commercial and government payloads, four high-resolution cameras, and a deployable solar array, is primarily a demonstration vehicle for Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) technology, a much larger SUV-sized rover from Astrolab intended to support NASA’s Artemis program. The company developed FLIP from scratch after NASA’s equivalent vehicle for which the Griffin-1 mission was contracted, VIPER, was temporarily grounded in 2024. This has left Astrobotic scrambling for a replacement on short notice. Astrolabe, which signed the contract within a month of hearing about the opportunity in the fall of 2024, took the FLIP rover from blank sheet of paper to finished rover in about a year.

Its standout feature is its highly deformable wheels, which are precision-crafted from silicone, composite and stainless steel, creating a smooth, expansive surface that grips the terrain. “It’s like you’re driving a Jeep or Land Rover off-road, allowing some air to escape from the tires to become softer and distribute the load over a larger area,” explains Garrett Matthews, founder of Astrolab. While the Moon’s nighttime temperatures of about -200 degrees Celsius (about -328 Fahrenheit) would cause traditional rubber tires to become glass-like and shatter, Astrolab’s solution aims to prevent the rover from sinking into the loose lunar dust – or regolith – covering the environment.