The Swiss luxury watchmaker has unveiled the specially designed Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive at Watches and Wonders 2026 in Geneva.
This next-generation tool watch has been specifically designed and engineered from the ground up for the unique demands of human spaceflight and timekeeping in space. Inspired by astronauts wearing space suits with gloves, all functions of the watch can be controlled through an innovative, patent-pending rotating bezel system, eliminating the need for a crown.
The Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive is crafted using lightweight white zirconium oxide ceramic and Ceratanium, ensuring high durability and resistance to temperature fluctuations. This tool watch underwent rigorous testing by IWC’s brand partner, Vast, the company developing next-generation space stations.
IWC Schaffhausen boasts 90 years of experience in crafting tool watches that are purpose-designed to meet the requirements of aviation. In recent years, the Swiss luxury watch manufacturer has gained first experiences in space through participating in the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn human spaceflight missions. However, every watch that has travelled to space to date has essentially been a modified terrestrial aviation watch.
As commercial space exploration enters a new era, IWC Schaffhausen is now pushing the limits with the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive (Ref. IW328601). This milestone marks the first IWC watch that has been designed and engineered from the ground up for the unique and challenging demands of human spaceflight.
Designed for Operation without a Crown
The Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive features an innovative, patent-pending rotating bezel system that allows all watch functions to be controlled without the use of a crown. Inspired by the scenario of astronauts wearing a space suit during spacewalks (EVA, or ExtraVehicular Activity), the ultimate exploration moment, the watch is designed to be able to be operated while wearing gloves.
Displaying the Mission’s Reference Time in a 24-Hour Format
The watch boasts a matte black dial that is reduced to the absolute essentials and avoids light reflections. With highly legible markings, it displays two different times. The mission’s reference time is indicated by the central hour and minute hand and also in 24-hour format by a dedicated hand on the outer dial scale, which runs from 00:00 to 24:00.
The necessity for a 24-hour display comes from the fact that a spacecraft or a space station completes an orbital cycle around the Earth roughly every 90 minutes. This means astronauts experience as many as 16 sunrises and sunsets within a 24-hour period. To manage this rapid sequence of day and night, they adhere to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). These formats retain the familiar 24-hour rhythm of Earth time, enabling the crew to keep a consistent routine with work and sleep times while in space.
The central hour and minute hands are normally synchronised with this reference time. If required, however, the hour hand can be moved in one-hour increments to display a second time zone. An astronaut in space can use this function, for example, to show the home time in any location on Earth.
After returning to Earth, the second time zone feature transforms the watch into the quintessential companion for frequent flyers: with a simple turn of the bezel, it can be set to display the time at the destination of travel. The edges of the black triangular hour and minute hands are coated with green Super-LumiNova while the arrow-shaped tip of the 24-hour hand glows blue in the dark. The blue second hand points to the inner scale, which features a thin ring in the same shade of blue.
The colour is a nod to Earth’s oceans as seen by astronauts from space. This dual-time display is made possible by the newly engineered IWC-manufactured 32722 calibre, an efficient automatic movement with a 120-hour power reserve that includes an integrated GMT module. There is also a date indication at 3 o’clock.
Extreme Robustness and Performance
When ascending to space on a rocket, the engines generate powerful vibrations and astronauts experience acceleration forces of up to 4g, which is equivalent to four times the force of gravity on Earth. In space, hardware is exposed to vacuum, radiation and extreme fluctuations in temperature. Temperatures can exceed 100 °C in direct sunlight and plummet to -150 °C in the shade.
To ensure high robustness and reliable operation during all phases of a mission, the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive is crafted entirely from advanced performance materials. Its case is made of white zirconium oxide ceramic. With a Vickers hardness rating second only to diamond, ceramic ranks among the hardest substances on Earth. The rotating bezel and case back are crafted from Ceratanium. Developed by IWC, Ceratanium combines the lightness and structural integrity of titanium with a hardness and scratch resistance similar to that of ceramic.
Tested and Certified for Spaceflight by Vast
The Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive has undergone extensive type testing by IWC’s brand partner, Vast. Vast is building Haven-1, scheduled to be the world’s first commercial space station. Haven-1 will inform Haven-2, a multi-module, continuously crewed station that is the proposed successor to the International Space Station (ISS).
At their headquarters in Long Beach, California, engineers at Vast conducted thorough evaluations of the watch, assessing its resistance to vibrations and pressure changes, as well as the compatibility of its materials with the Haven-1 environment. The vibration tests, for example, exceeded the typical forces that astronauts experience during ascent. The watch was secured to a platform that generated rapid directional changes, exposing it to forces of up to 10g. After each test, the engineers verified that the watch remained intact and fully functional.