This British watch brand has turned a Space Shuttle tyre into a watch strap
Out of this world
British watch brand Diatom has unveiled one of the more unusual watch accessories you'll see this year: a limited-edition strap made from material from the nose-landing-gear tyre of NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia.
The independent watchmaker, which specialises in creating timepieces incorporating genuine space-flown materials, has repurposed material from Columbia's STS-52 mission into a bespoke strap designed exclusively for its Legacy Collection watches.
For a bit of context, Columbia occupies a unique place in spaceflight history. On the 12th of April 1981, it became the first reusable spacecraft to successfully leave Earth's atmosphere, ushering in the Space Shuttle era and changing the future of human space exploration. Over the following two decades, it carried astronauts, satellites and scientific experiments into orbit before becoming one of NASA's most iconic vehicles.
The tyre material used in the strap comes specifically from mission STS-52, which launched in October 1992. During the ten-day mission, Columbia deployed the LAGEOS-2 satellite and conducted a series of scientific experiments while travelling more than four million miles and completing 159 orbits of Earth. Following its successful return, the shuttle's nose-landing-gear tyre was removed and retired as part of routine maintenance, preserving a small piece of spaceflight history.
Diatom has incorporated fragments of that original tyre into a matte-black FKM rubber strap, retaining visual cues from the source material through textured surfaces, raised ribs and recessed identification details. The result is a less flashy collector's item and a more wearable piece of aerospace history.
It's exactly the sort of niche release that space enthusiasts and watch collectors tend to love. After all, plenty of brands can claim their watches are inspired by space. Far fewer can say part of the product actually went there.
The Diatom Space Shuttle Strap is available exclusively for the brand's Legacy Collection and features authentic material sourced from Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-52 nose landing gear tyre, paired with a 316L stainless steel clasp and 24mm lug width.
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