In 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet citizen, became the first human to fly in space, returning an international hero. This astounding achievement inspired a whole nation!
The fascination of Russia with space can be found in its arts, literature, cinema, architecture and of course watchmaking: the watch brand Raketa was specially founded in 1961 in honour of Gagarin’s flight. “Raketa” means in Russian “Space Rocket”. The Cosmos is therefore in the DNA of Raketa and has always been a source of inspiration for the designers and engineers of the Raketa Watch Factory.
The Raketa Watch Factory felt compelled to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Sputnik-1 by manufacturing a watch in testimony of this incredible human achievement which was the first step of the space conquest. The dial is made of exactly the same special alloy as the metal heat shield that covered the sphere of Sputnik-1, an aluminium–magnesium alloy. The design of this 24-hour dial is directly inspired by the Soviet watch design “Sputnik” created by the Raketa Watch Factory in 1974.
When Soviet Raketa designers created the Copernicus model, they had the following idea in mind: the big circle (minute hand) symbolises the Earth, and the intermediary circle (hour hand) symbolises Jupiter. Why? Because the Earth orbits the sun in 1 year and Jupiter in 12 years: exactly the same ratio as between the minute hand (big circle) that “orbits” the dial in 1 hour and the hour hand (intermediary circle) that “orbits” the dial in 12 hours.
The Raketa Baikonur watch was engineered with the help of the cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. He holds one of the records for the number of stays in the international space station (6 stays) and for the total length of time spent in orbit (803 days). He thus knows more than anyone else about the ideal watch for a cosmonaut.
The 24 hour dial enables the wearer to tell night from day in the space station. When Raketa "Baikonur" is used in the space station, the automatic winding will not work as efficiently in the absence of gravity, and the cosmonaut will therefore need to wind it up by hand using the manual winding function. This function includes a very special system that disengages the wheels of the automatic winding mechanism to avoid their premature use while the watch is in space.
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