How the Mission M250 developed from TWC No. 1, the chronograph worn on STS-99 in 2000, through each series to the current M250-2 and MM250-2.
The Mission M250 is Towson's signature chronograph. Its design goes back to TWC No. 1, the watch ESA astronaut Gerhard Thiele wore aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-99 in February 2000. The record of that flight, with the NASA certificate, is here: TWC No. 1: The Towson Chronograph Flown on STS-99.
Where it started
Towson Watch Company was founded in 1998 by Hartwig Balke and George Thomas. Balke, a German-born engineer, took charge of design and construction. Thomas, a watchmaker who had spent years restoring historic timepieces, took charge of regulation. Before there was a catalog, the two built one-off watches to order. The Masterpiece Archive records that work.
Their first chronograph followed a short brief: Swiss accuracy and German craftsmanship. That meant a Valjoux 7750, a steel case and a dial that reads at a glance. Chronographs from that first series were submitted for official Swiss chronometer testing, and No. 1 spent eleven days in orbit.
Hartwig Balke likes to say that a fine watch is a man's signature. The first chronograph was designed that way: for the person wearing it, with the brand kept quiet. The dial carried only the initials TWC, and the caseback carried the names of the crew.
The same idea, refined
Every Mission since has kept the layout of No. 1: three registers, a tachymeter scale and a date. What changed over twenty years is the case, the dial finishing and, with the Mission Moon, the movement. The timeline below follows each step.
The current watches are the MISSION M250-2 and the MISSION MOON MM250-2.
