Amida’s NASA-Inspired Ceramic Digitrend Has a Strap Made From Actual Spacesuit Fabric

There are some watches that have actually been to space but then there are others that simply remind of the Space Age during which they were invented. Amida’s Digitrend falls into the latter camp, debuting in 1976 as a paradigm example of the casquette style born during that era. These watches wore their (typically digital) dials on the edge of the case so that you didn’t have to turn your wrist to tell the time when driving a car.

A couple of years ago, the Digitrend came back to life with a faithful recreation, and since then it has been given a couple of inspired variants, such as one with a skeletonized sapphire top. Now, it’s returned with some NASA influence, and it’s never looked better.

Brief History of a Bold Idea

Amida was founded in 1925 in Grenchen, Switzerland, but the original Digitrend didn’t debut until Baselworld in 1976, the same year NASA rolled out the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Both were aerodynamically shaped, both were futuristic-looking, and both were kind of ahead of their time. Engineer Zeno Hurt’s patented Light Reflecting Display, a horizontal mechanical jump-hour system projected vertically through a prism periscope, was an analog workaround to the LED craze without needing to use batteries.

The quartz crisis eventually swallowed Amida whole, and by 1979, the company was gone. But the Digitrend became exactly the kind of obscure cult object that watch collectors fell in love ith. Fast forward to 2024, when a new team, designer Matthieu Allègre and Clément Meynier among them, brought it roaring back with an upgraded Soprod Newton P092 automatic base, in-house jumping-hour module, sapphire prism, and 50m of water resistance.

Houston, We Have a Watch

The Digitrend NASA Tribute is the most visually striking version yet. The case dimensions remain the same at 39.6mm wide with a 39mm lug-to-lug and 15.6mm thickness, but the materials are entirely new. The black DLC-coated stainless steel monoblock case now wears a polished white ceramic top shell. Ceramic was used on the exterior of the Space Shuttle itself to handle the brutal heat of atmospheric reentry.

The NASA “worm” logo sits on the top shell in red, a callback to the agency’s identity from 1975 to 1992 that carries a certain nostalgia for anyone who grew up watching shuttle launches on television. The jumping-hour display now features red accents framing the apertures in place of the orange found on earlier models, almost looking like a cockpit readout.

Turn it over and there’s a sapphire exhibition caseback displaying the Soprod movement with Geneva stripes on the bridge and radial brushing on the rotor. Engraved on the caseback is, “per aspera ad astra,” the phrase associated with space exploration meaning, “through hardships to the stars.”

The Strap

The strap is worth its own mention. Looking like something worn by an astronaut, it’s a bi-material construction, rubberized leather with a quilted beta cloth insert, the same type of technical fabric used in NASA spacesuit construction. It closes with a Velcro hook-and-loop system, which is itself a Swiss invention from the 1940s that NASA later adopted for zero-gravity environments.

The packaging is one of the cooler details of this release. The watch ships in a case underneath a clear dome enclosure that doubles as a display piece.

Spec Sheet

Pricing & Availability

Limited to just 100 pieces, the Amida Digitrend NASA Tribute is available now exclusively through Amida’s website, priced at $4,420, with scheduled delivery in May.

Recap

Amida Digitrend NASA Tribute

Amida’s Digitrend NASA Tribute is the brand’s boldest iteration yet, dressing its signature jump-hour driver’s watch in a black DLC case, polished white ceramic shell, and the iconic NASA worm logo.

Learn More: Amida