Few watches have the power to inspire like the Omega Speedmaster. The first watch ever worn on the moon, it has become an enduring symbol of the ingenuity and skill that took us into space. On the 60th anniversary of the Speedmaster’s release, we look back with space-enthusiast and brand ambassador, George Clooney, at the heady days of the Apollo programme and reflect on why the Speedmaster was able to go where it did.

While he’s played an astronaut more than once, few people know about Clooney’s love affair with space exploration. Clooney grew up in the 60s and was eight years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon. Like most children of his generation, astronauts were his heroes and going into space was his dream.

When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon on July 20, 1969, the young Clooney watched from his suburban backyard. Standing with his father, looking up at the moon, he felt a special connection with his heroes as they took their first steps into a new world. Like the astronauts they were straining to see, Clooney’s father also wore an Omega.

According to Clooney, all children knew that the astronauts were wearing Omega watches. He remembers that “Omega was absolutely part of the space programme when I was growing up. Omega was about precision time… and it seemed like the space programme was a natural progression”.

What Clooney didn’t know then, however, was that the Speedmaster was originally envisioned for a completely different purpose. As the name suggests, it was built for speed, and when first released 60 years ago, it was intended not for rocket ships, but for racing cars.

It was in 1964 that NASA began hunting for a chronograph to use on its manned space missions. They chose watches from a number of different brands and put them through the same series of tests that were used for every piece of hardware that was intended for space. Only one watch survived the extreme temperatures, vibrations, hard shocks and unforgiving vacuums of the testing process – the Omega Speedmaster.

Today, six decades on, the Speedmaster is still qualified for all manned space missions and is a permanent piece of equipment on the International Space Station. In testament to the forward-thinking design of the original, the Moonwatch made now is essentially the same as the one released by Omega in the pre-space age.

For Clooney, this makes the Speedmaster a true classic, like a vintage wine. He said: “Some things are classic, and when they’re classic, you will always want them. You’d be really upset if they changed. We want modern technology – like our cell phones – but there is something about having certain classic things, that if they changed, it would break your heart.”

On the inside, the calibre is also unmodified and manufacturing the Moonwatch remains a complex exercise, as it has always been. It takes a staggering 14 months to prepare all the separate component parts prior to assembly, and 80 manual operations are needed to assemble the base plate alone. Like when it was first released, the human hand is an essential part of the process.

It is ironic that the Omega Speedmaster has required no modification, considering that the NASA space programme can be credited with technical innovations spanning from mobile telecommunications to SMS messaging, and from solar panels to water purification. As Clooney said, the Speedmaster may well be the true definition of a classic: a design that need never be altered.

When asked about the legacy of the Speedmaster and the space programme it was a part of, Clooney said: “[They are symbols] …of a time that our world was looking forward to challenges. When we thought we could do better, and when we thought that we could reach for the stars and actually get to them. It was without question, us at our finest and our bravest, and the astronauts were in the lead.”

The Omega Speedmaster is available from Diamonds International at Portomaso, Valletta and Pjazza Tigné. For more information, call 2203 5201.