Current ISS crew watch choices

When you strap into a rocket and punch through the atmosphere at 17,500 miles per hour, you don’t have a lot of room for sentiment. Every gram of cargo is budgeted, every piece of gear serves a purpose. So when you see an astronaut wearing a watch on the International Space Station, that’s not a fashion choice. It’s a piece of mission-critical equipment. The current ISS crew—Expedition 72, a mix of NASA, Roscosmos, and international partners—are up there right now conducting experiments, maintaining life support, and handling emergencies in zero-G. And yes, they’re wearing watches. Here’s exactly what’s on their wrists, no fluff.

The most visible watch among the current crew is the Omega Speedmaster Professional, the same chronograph that passed NASA’s brutal qualification tests in the 1960s and went to the Moon. NASA astronauts on the station today, like Commander Sunita Williams and Flight Engineer Don Pettit, still wear this piece. It’s not a heritage reissue or a limited edition—it’s the standard 42mm manual-wind Moonwatch with the Hesalite crystal. Why? Because it works. The manual movement doesn’t rely on batteries that could fail in extreme temperatures. The chronograph function allows precise timing of experiments or decompression procedures. And the 48-hour power reserve means it keeps running through a busy orbit when you forget to wind it. Omega updated the movement a few years ago to the Co-Axial Master Chronometer Calibre 3861, which is more resistant to magnetic fields, but the core design is identical to what Buzz Aldrin wore on Apollo 11. For American men in their 20s who want a watch that has literally been tested in vacuum, it doesn’t get more straightforward than that.

But the Speedmaster isn’t the only game in orbit. Russian cosmonauts on Expedition 72, including Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineer Nikolai Chub, wear the Sturmanskie Gagarin, a watch named after Yuri Gagarin and produced by the Volmax factory in Moscow. This is a hand-wound mechanical watch with a 24-hour dial, meaning the hour hand makes one full rotation per day instead of two. On the ISS, where sunrise and sunset happen every 90 minutes, a standard 12-hour watch is nearly useless for telling time. The 24-hour format ties directly to mission clocks and Zulu time (UTC), which the entire station uses to coordinate. The Sturmanskie is smaller than the Speedmaster—38mm—and costs a fraction of the price, but it’s built to survive vibrations and G-forces during Soyuz launches. It’s also a direct link to the Soviet space program, and seeing it on a wrist during joint operations between the U.S. and Russian segments is a practical reminder that spaceflight is a multinational effort with distinct hardware traditions.

There’s also a wildcard on board. Several crew members from the current Axiom Space private missions—which dock to the station periodically—have been spotted wearing the Garmin MARQ Captain, a GPS smartwatch designed for sailing and aviation. This is a digital watch with a full color display, barometric altimeter, and navigation features. On the ISS, it’s used more for fitness tracking and scheduling than critical timing. The MARQ can sync with the station’s Wi-Fi network (yes, there’s Wi-Fi up there) to pull down crew schedules and remind astronauts of experiments or exercise slots. It’s not NASA-approved for EVA—you can’t trust electronics in a vacuum without rigorous testing—but for daily station life, it’s a practical tool. The MARQ’s titanium case and sapphire crystal hold up against accidental bangs into handrails and equipment racks. It’s the kind of watch a guy in his 20s might actually buy for hiking or sailing, and seeing it on orbit validates that rugged smartwatches have a real place in extreme environments.

Not every watch on the station is a bespoke space tool. Some crew members wear personal pieces they brought along in their flight bags. A few have been photographed with the Casio G-Shock DW-5600, a legendarily tough digital watch that costs around $100. It’s shock-resistant, water-resistant to 200 meters, and has a backlight that works in the dim corners of the station. No one at NASA is issuing G-Shocks, but cosmonauts and astronauts alike have worn them for decades because they’re disposable. If a watch gets damaged during a spacewalk prep or a coolant leak, you don’t cry over a lost heirloom. You grab another from the cargo Dragon. For the casual space enthusiast, the takeaway is simple: the best watch for space is the one that reliably tells time, survives a drop onto a metal floor, and doesn’t require a battery swap in zero-G.

If you’re reading this and thinking about what watch to buy for your own adventures—whether that’s a camping trip or just a day in the office—the ISS crew’s choices boil down to three things: durability, functionality, and redundancy. The Omega Speedmaster is the gold standard for heritage and proven toughness. The Sturmanskie is a niche pick for anyone who actually needs 24-hour timekeeping. The Garmin MARQ is for the tech-first crowd who wants data at a glance. And the G-Shock is the no-brainer for guys who want something that just won’t break. Right now, on a station 250 miles above Earth, all four are ticking away, timing experiments, monitoring orbits, and proving that a good watch is still essential hardware, even in space.