(Photo credit: GCTC)
When NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim launches aboard Soyuz MS-27 on April 8, bound for a 240-day mission aboard the International Space Station, he’ll bring more than a résumé that reads like fiction. The former Navy SEAL, Harvard-trained physician and now astronaut will also carry a Rolex GMT-Master II.
It’s not the first time a Rolex is in space. Edgar Mitchell, Ron Evans, Jack Swigert and others brought their personal Rolex GMT-Master watches on Apollo missions. More recently, Saudi astronaut Ali AlQarni took his modern GMT Pepsi to space on the Ax-2 mission in 2023. But Kim’s 240-day journey will likely mark the longest a Rolex has ever been off the planet.
Kim’s résumé reads like a script from an action-hero movie, except it’s all real. After a tough upbringing as the son of an immigrant family, who owned a liquor store in Los Angeles, he enlisted in the military at the age of 18 and became a Navy SEAL with over 100 combat missions in the Middle East. He was trained as a combat medic, sniper and navigator — and eventually achieved the rank of lieutenant commander, earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star. He went on to graduate from Harvard as a medical doctor before being selected as a NASA astronaut out of 18,300 applicants — all by the age of 33.
“I'm fascinated by anything that is challenging,” he once said on a podcast.
In space, where every item is calculated and weighed, a Rolex GMT-Master will once again orbit Earth, ticking in sync with a man who has made a life of defying gravity.