A Stolen NASA Space Watch Found After 30 Years

Originally published by Jack Forster on Hodinkee.

It doesn't happen very often that a Speedmaster Professional that was actually issued to NASA surfaces, and it almost never happens that an issued and flown Speedmaster appears. This is for several good reasons. One of these is that all NASA-issued Speedmasters are government, not personal, property. Among the most famous of all Speedmasters is the one worn by astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface, during the Apollo 11 mission; that watch was, as all Speedmaster fans know, stolen in 1970 while en route to the Smithsonian. However, we've just read on CollectSpace.com that a long-lost flown and issued Speedmaster has surfaced – one which was worn, along with Speedy he owned personally, by astronaut Donn Eisele, who was Command Module pilot on Apollo 7. Apollo 7 was the very first manned Apollo mission to achieve orbit. (The ill-fated Apollo 1 mission would have been, but tragically, astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee were killed when a fire swept through their spacecraft on the launchpad, during a test of its electrical systems, in January of 1967).