Spaceman's Best Friend

Five decades after the harrowing Apollo 13 mission, Omega’s Speedmaster Silver Snoopy Award 50th Anniversary delivers a timely dose of uplifting comic relief Justin Ng is craving.

- Justin Ng

Five months and half a century after the crew of Apollo 13 crashed back to the Earth, unharmed but radically shaken, the Speedmaster Silver Snoopy Award 50th Anniversary at long last was unveiled.

In more ways than one, the watch was born out of a fortuitous and seemingly predestined conclusion to a hazardous situation. Leaving the Earth on Apr 11, 1970, the Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the Apollo space programme and the third meant to land on the Moon. Two days into its voyage, an oxygen tank in the service module failed, rendering the mission impossible. Left with no alternative, the crew had to abort and loop around the Moon, in preparation for a return flight straight back to the Earth.

With oxygen rapidly depleting, the three-man crew abandoned the command and service module, and retreated hastily into the lunar module as a last resort. Although regarded as a lifeboat of sorts, the cabin of the lunar module was not designed to accommodate more than two astronauts nor for the duration entailed. After all, its purpose was to facilitate the descent onto the lunar surface and serve as a base for the spacecraft. The precarious situation was further exacerbated by limited power on board. Faced with a desperate situation bordering on life and death, the crew shut down nearly all energy-consuming systems to conserve energy, including an on-board digital timer. Their aspiration was no longer tracing the footsteps of Buzz Aldrin but to live to tell their incredible tale of surviving a space flight gone awry.