The brand

Aerospace materials, worn on the wrist

Diatom was founded in Sheffield in 2023 by Dr Alex Baker and Dr Chris Rose, two materials scientists who did their PhDs at the University of Sheffield and then went into the space sector. Their earlier venture, Sent Into Space, built a launch platform that reaches near space at a fraction of the cost of conventional rocketry, and more than a decade of launch operations brought collaborations with research institutions, space agencies and astronauts.

The name comes from one of those flights. In 2015 they sent a scientific probe into the stratosphere to sample particulates and found diatoms, microscopic algae-like organisms, in the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Life where it had no business being. That discovery gave the brand its name before it had any watches.

What separates Diatom from other space-themed brands is access. The founders describe having both extraordinary natural materials and rare mission-flown artefacts, plus the scientific knowledge to forge new alloys and machine them into watch components. That is not marketing language stretched over a stock dial. The Terra Meteorite collection cuts its dials from a 4.5-billion-year-old Gibeon meteorite and sets them against a chapter ring made from a proprietary titanium alloy containing material recovered from the Apollo 11 Command Module.

The Inner Worlds collection takes the idea further and puts the history in the movement. Each of the five models, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon and Mars, is built on an ETA 2892-A2 with a custom rotor visible through the caseback. Mercury’s rotor is made from Liberty Bell 7, Venus from the Atlas-Agena that launched Mariner 2, Earth from Apollo 13 Command Module thermal insulation. The Moon and Mars instead carry lunar and Martian meteorite on textured enamel dials. All five are limited to 450 pieces at €2,550.

Both collections share a 39.5mm steel case with 100m water resistance and sapphire, the Terra at 10.9mm thick on a Sellita SW200 and the Inner Worlds slimmer at 9.35mm. The Terra runs €1,750, limited to 650 pieces per colourway and just 50 for the Verdant. And every single watch is flown to around 120,000 feet before it ships, with high-definition footage of its own flight included.

Who it’s for

You want the story in the watch to be literally true. Plenty of brands reference space; Diatom machines Apollo hardware into rotors and cuts dials from meteorite, and the founders have the aerospace background to back it up. If you like the idea of owning a documented object with provenance as much as a watch, and a 39.5mm case on a proven Swiss movement suits you, this is a genuinely unusual proposition at the price.

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