If you’re the kind of person who can’t leave the house without a watch on, you might know what it’s like to be an astronaut circling the Moon. Relative to the start of a mission, astronauts needed to know what time it was – even if that time doesn’t look like what we think is normal. In the case of Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot on Apollo 11, he needed to know when events were taking place to prepare for the return of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the Moon. This talk will discuss the need for timekeeping in space, why we don’t call them watches, and the tangled history of the chronograph collection of the National Air and Space Museum.

The Ask An Expert lecture series at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is presented every 2nd and 4th Thursday at 12:30 PM. A Museum staff member talks to the public about the history, collection, or personalities related to a specific artifact or exhibition in the Museum.