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 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.
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