NASA provided 55 of its Omega Speedmaster chronographs to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, on April 27, 1976. The agency had received a total of 100 such watches from Omega between 1965 and 1968. Of those, 71 saw use during spaceflight missions from 1965 to 1975.
The watches carried unique NASA identification numbers and were issued to astronauts for Gemini and Apollo missions. Eugene Cernan wore NASA number 28 on three flights, including Gemini IX-A, Apollo 10 and Apollo 17. NASA retained the remaining watches for Space Shuttle training until 1985, when most space-flown examples had already been transferred to the museum.
