Disclaimer: The purpose of this thread is having a bit of end of the year festive season fun, nothing else. It can be construed as one of the most pointless exercises in misplaced vanity, in which case here's a link to our main site, thefinalfrontier.stackexchange.com for your convenience, or a proper giggle inducing fun. The choice is yours, but I assure you, nothing about it is sexist. We'll be exclusively rating the beauty of space exploration related hardware, not people or any other living beings, and the title is as such merely because I couldn't think of a better one at the time of writing this.
The rules:
- One photograph of the sexiest piece of space exploration hardware that you can think of and was active (in use, operational) in 2013 per post, with attributed author and a link to the source.
- One paragraph photograph caption describing your case why you believe your submission should be nominated for the title of The Sexiest Space Exploration Hardware of 2013.
- You may submit more than one nominee, each in their own new answer to this thread. No duplication of previous submissions allowed, even if your submission features a different photograph of the same hardware!
- Be appropriate. Posting photographs of indecently exposed pieces of space exploration hardware will result in immediate (might take a while™) deletion of the submission in question, and possible other submissions by the same author will be mass-downvoted by all three active participants in our Space Exploration Meta!
- Highest voted submission by the end of the year (might be extended for a month, if required) wins the title of The Sexiest Space Exploration Hardware of 2013, is indicated so by accepting the answer, and might feature in future designs of our off-site Space Exploration community promotion ads (no promise™).
- Have fun, vote on those beautiful pieces of space exploration hardware that are / will be submitted, and brag to your friends how awesome Space Exploration Stack Exchange is.
And the winner is...:
The title of The Sexiest Space Exploration Hardware of 2013 goes to ESA’s Swarm Constellation. By the end of the competition date, the winning candidate received 8 upvotes by the pageant judging panel, consisting of all Space Exploration Stack Exchange members with the privilege to vote. Shared second place runner-ups are Voyager 1 and JPL's Opportunity aka Mars Exploration Rover - B (MER-B), both receiving 4 upvotes.
The competition will not be extended for another month as no new entries were submitted in the last two weeks of the competition. This concludes our Sexiest Space Exploration Hardware of 2013 competition. Thanks go to all that submitted your entries and everyone that voted on them! The Sexiest Space Exploration Hardware of 2014 competition will be announced at the start of December, 2014.