The Raketa Polar watch is certainly one of the most interesting Soviet/Russian watches. It was first produced in 1970 for Soviet Polar explorers and opened the path to a long history of 24 hour watches. The legacy of this historic watch continues to these days.
In 1970, the Raketa Watch Factory was asked to design and produce a special watch for the polar explorers of the 16th Soviet Antarctic expedition. Since this freezing continent is in perpetual daylight or darkness during consecutive periods of 6 months, this watch needed not only to be robust but also needed a special 24 hour movement that would allow to tell the time without knowing if it was day or night.
The Factory improved the construction of the 24 hour movement to allow the Polar watch to work in freezing temperatures. The size of ruby stones and of metal axes of the movement can slightly change in freezing temperatures, which in turn can negatively influence the good running of the wheel gear of the movement. When assembling the automatic movement of the new Polar watch, the Factory selects the ruby stones and axes in such a way as to ensure that the axes’ pivots will properly turn even when their size slightly changes in the polar freezing temperatures.
The new construction developed by the Raketa Watch Factory to allow the movement to work in freezing temperatures was tested in March 2024 in very rough conditions in a specialized Russian laboratory. The results were very positive.
Further to the successful laboratory tests, the Raketa Polar watch has been officially certified by the Russian Federal Agency for Technical Regulation & Metrology to comply with all the requirements necessary to survive in the harsh polar environment. Every watch is delivered with its own individual original certificate.
50 years after its first field expedition in Antarctica, the Raketa Polar watch is back in the freezing continent for which it was initially developed. It is being tested at the famous Russian Vostok station. This is one of the harshest places on Earth with the lowest reliably measured temperature of -89.2 °C. Founded by the Soviet Union in 1957, the station is at 3,488 metres (11,444 ft) above sea level and is one of the most isolated established research stations on the Antarctic continent.
The Raketa Polar watch with its new movement construction is tested in real conditions by Russian polar scientists during the year 2024. The watch accompanies the scientists in their daily life and research programs. The results are so far very positive and the scientists can fully rely on this robust watch to help them work in this extremely harsh environment.
This video shows the Raketa Polar watch working by -73 °C.
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