This new watch by Omega is space-tough and Mars-mission ready

Swiss watchmaker Omega, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), has launched a new space-tough and Mars-mission ready watch. Unveiled at ESA's ESTEC facility in The Netherlands on 27 September 2022, the watch, dubbed Marstimer, is the first watch to display the time on Earth and Mars.

The Omega X-33 Marstimer was developed in partnership with ESA's Mars exploration teams and tested at ESA ESTEC. It includes features from the previous ESA-Omega collaboration on the X-33 Skywalker. In addition to telling the time on Mars, the Omega X-33 Marstimer can find true north on Earth and the Red Planet without using a magnetic compass.

Swiss watch brand @omegawatches has teamed up with ESA to launch the #Marstimer: the first watch to display the time on Earth and Mars, developed in partnership with our Mars exploration teams and tested at ESA ESTEC 👉 https://t.co/o1dZXtQgYX pic.twitter.com/UdodzlXA2t

— ESA (@esa) September 30, 2022

"The initial concept for the Marstimer came from ESA's engineers and scientists, who wanted a watch with Mars-specific mission functions to help operate the Rosalind Franklin rover. The team got in touch with Omega and this led to a partnership to create a new watch," ESA said in a statement.

Rosalind Franklin, a planned robotic Mars rover, that will search for the building blocks of life on the Red Planet. The rover will land at a site with high potential for finding well-preserved organic material and drill down to two metres into the surface to sample the soil, analyse its composition and search for evidence of past – and perhaps even present – life buried underground.

The rover is part of Europe's ExoMars programme, a joint endeavour between the European Space Agency and the Russian State Space Corporation, Roscosmos. The mission was scheduled to launch in 2022, but it was suspended due to Russian aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions.