On a recent trip to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to commemorate the ultimately safe return of the Apollo 13 mission, our group was most struck by how primitive the technology used in the space programme looks today. It is as if astronauts went into orbit in little more than a glorified dustbin. Indeed, the story goes that the computing power available to Nasa was less than that of a modern smartphone.

But the truth is, primitive or not, the space programme is no further on today than it was nearly half a century ago. The last man to have walked on the moon was Gene Cernan in 1972. And one of the most valuable tools he had was the humble mechanical chronograph.

The space programmes of both the US and the Soviet Union have seen many horological firsts, however the first watch to leave the earth's atmosphere was on the wrist of Yuri Gagarin who ventured into the unknown on 12 April 1961 when he took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in modern-day Kazakhstan.

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There is, however, some disagreement over the model on Gagarin's wrist - and he can't answer himself as he died in 1968 when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting crashed.

The most likely contender is a Sturmanskie. This Soviet brand was created in 1949 but was not available to the public. Gagarin and his fellow pilots were issued with a Sturmanskie after graduating from the Chkalove Air Force Pilot School in Orenberg, 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow and close to the Kazakh border.

The brand is still available - and now non-pilots can buy them. They are made by a Swiss-Russian partnership and mainly produced in Switzerland. The company makes a big deal out of its Gagarin connection, although there are arguments about its accuracy. The model it claims was worn on Vostok 1 was only issued to students until 1953 - four years before Gagarin himself graduated - and there are doubts as to whether it would have survived the trip.

Another Gagarin watch was sold by Sotheby's in 1993 for $25,875 (worth around £27,000 today). The model in question was supposedly a Rodina - a claim still supported by some European collectors. To muddy the waters still further, the watch displayed by the Moscow Museum Of Cosmonauts as the watch is another Russian brand, a Pobeda (Russian for "Victory" - a brand name chosen by Stalin).

The first watch to be worn in open space was the white-faced Strela (Russian for "Arrow") on the wrist of 30-year-old cosmonaut Alexey Leonov when he left the Voskhod 2 spacecraft on 18 March 1965 for the first space walk (or EVA - extravehicular activity - as it is technically known). This brand had first been issued to Soviet pilots in the Fifties and became the standard cosmonaut timepiece until it was withdrawn in 1979. Today Strela has been reborn as a German brand in Munich.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the American space programme put its trust in the Swiss watch industry. The first Swiss timepiece to shrug off the surly bonds of earth was a Heuer stopwatch worn by John Glenn when he became the first American to orbit the planet on 20 February 1962 on the Friendship 7 mission.

TAG Heuer is understandably proud but is scrupulous in describing itself as the first Swiss watchmaker in space - note not watch!

The honour of being the first Swiss wristwatch to go into orbit belongs to Breitling, thanks to the 24-hour Navitimer worn by Scott Carpenter when he lifted off three months later.

Carpenter had been one of the original seven astronauts chosen by Nasa for Project Mercury in 1959 along with John Glenn. He was also Glenn's backup pilot. He had suggested the Navitimer to Nasa, who then developed the model he wore.

Unfortunately - and a little ironically - the model wasn't waterproof so having survived the pressures of space, it was damaged by seawater when Carpenter splashed down in the Atlantic.

The watch most people (in the West at least) associate with the Space Race, however, is the Omega Speedmaster - the first watch to walk on the moon. On 21 July 1969, Buzz Aldrin, of the Apollo 11 mission, became the second man to stroll on the moon's surface and his Omega (reference ST105.012) the first watch - although it should have been Neil Armstrong's timepiece but unfortunately as the latter prepared to make a giant leap for mankind he had to leave it behind as the lunar module's electronic timer had malfunctioned. Sadly, having made it all the way back to earth safely, Aldrin's Speedmaster was lost in transit when he sent it off to be saved for posterity.

The Speedmaster had originally been developed for use by the artillery in battle but soon became a firm favourite with pilots. When Nasa was looking for official chronographs for its space programme it invited a number of brands to put forward suggested pieces that were then tested under extreme conditions. (There is an oft-told story that the watches were bought secretly from Corrigan's, a Houston jeweller - though this has been called a "complete -invention" by Nasa engineer James Ragan.)

Having come through the tests with flying colours, the Omega Speedmaster went into space on Gemini 3 in March 1965.

Several months later Ed White made the first American space walk wearing a Speedmaster during the Gemini 4 mission. Today, the Speedmaster is still the only watch certified by Nasa for EVA.

All the above watches are self-winding so the first known automatic chronograph in space was the Seiko 6139 that was worn by the American astronaut William R Pogue. He was the pilot of Skylab 4, confusingly the third (and final) manned visit to the Skylab Orbital

Workshop in 1973. His tour of duty was the longest to that date, lasting 84 days until his return in February 1974. The watch he wore is now known as the "Pogue Seiko". Of course, the digital watch made it out there, too. The Speedmaster X-33 was a joint development between Omega and Nasa and claimed to be the first watch to be designed with the active participation of astronauts. Although it was worn by a number of astronauts on several missions it was not a success with the public and was discontinued - although it has -recently been updated and reintroduced.

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Having flown the flag for Switzerland early on in the space race, in 2012 TAG Heuer became involved with Elon Musk's SpaceX programme. The TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 SpaceX Chronograph was launched to celebrate the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's first orbit. Designed to echo Glenn's Heuer stopwatch, it was space-tested aboard the SpaceX's Dragon, the first commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station in May that year.

Other brands that are known to have boldly gone include the Swiss brand Fortis, which has supplied the official watch of the Russian cosmonaut programme since 1994. In 1985 the German cosmonaut Reinhard Furrer patriotically wore the German-made Sinn 142 on his flight on the Space Shuttle Challenger, its last successful mission before it was tragically lost with all hands in January 1986.

Originally published in the GQ Watch and Jewellery 2016 supplement as part of the November 2015 issue of British GQ.