Bengaluru company tests watch 35 km up in air

A Bengaluru watch company sent one of its watches beyond ‘the human space boundary’ for testing. It returned from an altitude of 35 km without damage or condensation, it says.

Nirupesh Joshi of Bangalore Watch Company, which made the watch, says while watches work fine inside pressurised environments like spacecrafts and space stations, things may go wrong outside. They suspended their watch outside the spacecraft to expose it to “harsh environment” like negative temperatures, he wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Most commercial passengers fly at an altitude of 8 to 11 km and, according to the imaginary but debated Karman Line, outer space starts 100 km above the earth’s surface.

The test was conducted in the UK in March. The automatic watch was launched using a high-altitude balloon, aboard a 2 kg carbon fibre spacecraft. It touched down after four hours.

According to Joshi, who runs the brand with his wife Mercy Amalraj, not many companies have demonstrated such expertise. “All European, and maybe one or two Japanese ones,” he told Metrolife.

The company was given a three-week window by the UK aviation authorities for the launch and they had three false starts because of bad weather. 

Will Indian astronauts be wearing the ‘Indian space watch’ on upcoming missions? He ducked the query posted by netizens but said, “(If they do), it will be a big moment for a space geek like me.”