Bremont has become the first British watch brand bound for the lunar surface, launching its new Supernova collection alongside a groundbreaking mission with aerospace company Astrolab.
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Luxury British watchmaker Bremont is about to make history.
Later this year, the brand will become the first British watch company to place a timepiece permanently on the Moon through a collaboration with American aerospace company Astrolab.
The mission centres on Astrolab’s FLIP rover (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform), which will carry a Bremont Supernova Chronograph aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission One.
The rover is scheduled to land in the Nobile region near the lunar south pole no earlier than summer 2026, launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
Unlike watches that have previously accompanied astronauts into space, this one won’t be coming home. The Supernova Chronograph will remain on the Moon as a permanent artefact, integrated into the FLIP rover’s chassis via a custom-engineered tile plate.
The timing carries extra weight. The White House has tasked NASA with establishing a Coordinated Lunar Time by the end of 2026, a consistent, atomic-clock-based standard for navigation and communication on the Moon. Bremont’s watch will land in the same year that lunar time itself comes into being.
“We are incredibly excited by the prospect of becoming the first British watch brand in history to go to the Moon and stay there indefinitely,” said Davide Cerrato, CEO of Bremont.
“Bremont and Astrolab share deep synergies in their values, particularly around innovation, exploration, and a relentless pursuit of new frontiers.”
Astrolab founder and CEO Jaret Matthews said the mission was designed to prove technology can survive the Moon’s harshest conditions.
“This mission is all about demonstrating critical technologies in the harsh environments found at the lunar south pole. We look forward to putting the Supernova through the ultimate engineering test.”
Before launch, both the watch and the rover must pass a gruelling testing regime known as Spacecraft Protoflight Qualification, covering structural, thermal and electrical performance under conditions more severe than the mission itself will demand.
The process follows what Astrolab calls a “Test Like You Fly” philosophy.
The mission also marks the debut of Supernova, a new collection that sits above Bremont’s existing Supermarine, Terra Nova and Altitude lines, and introduces Space as a fourth universe alongside the brand’s established Sea, Land and Air categories.
The 41mm Supernova Chronograph is built from 904L stainless steel, with a multi-faceted decahedral black ceramic bezel and a three-dimensional dial inspired by the geometry of spacecraft solar arrays.
It runs on Bremont’s chronometer-rated BC77 movement, with a 62-hour power reserve and an exhibition case back.
A full-scale FLIP rover will be on display at the Bremont booth at Watches & Wonders Geneva, which opens on April 14, the brand’s third consecutive year exhibiting at the show.
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Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.
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The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.
The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.
Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.
The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.
When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.
The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.
“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.
Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.
While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.
Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.
Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.
The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.
Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.
Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.
One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.
Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.
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