Orion, intrepid bacteria and sonic booms – in pictures

Dense filaments of gas in an interstellar cloud. The Herschel infrared space observatory has provided evidence that the sonic booms from exploding stars may sweep up interstellar gas into giant filaments where stars are born
Photograph: D. Arzoumanian (CEA Saclay)/PACS/SPIRE/Herschel/ESA

It was announced that the project office of the world's biggest and most sensitive radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array or Ska, will be located at Jodrell Bank in the UK. It's hoped that the €1.5 billion telescope array will help answer some of the most intractable questions in cosmology such as the nature of dark energy Photograph: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/TDP/DRAO/SPDO

Nasa released this image to celebrate the Hubble space telescope's 21st birthday. It shows a pair of interacting spiral galaxies called Arp 273. The disc of the larger galaxy is being distorted by the gravitational pull of its companion galaxy
Photograph: Hubble telescope/NASA/ESA

Mockups of the Eurobot Ground Prototype and Aouda.X spacesuit were tested in the Mars-like terrain of Spain's Rio Tinto mines. The field test was organised by the Austrian Space Forum and the European Space Agency
Photograph: ESA

Spores of the hardy bacterium Bacillus subtilis completed their 22-month stint in the EXPOSE-R test container outside the International Space Station. The objective of the research is to find out whether bacteria could survive interplanetary journeys in meteorites
Photograph: DLR/NASA

This picture of the star formation region NGC 3582 was taken with the Wide Field Imager at the European Space Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The image reveals giant loops of gas ejected by dying stars
Photograph: Digitized Sky Survey 2 and Joe DePasquale /ESO

Believe it or not, this is the moon's surface. Material has been flung outwards by a violent impact to create a starburst pattern with a small crater at its centre
Photograph: Arizona State University/ASA/GSFC/NASA

Nasa engineer Ernie Wright looks on as the first six of the James Webb Space Telescope's 18 primary mirror segments are readied for cryogenic testing at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama Photograph: David Higginbotham/MSFC/NASA

Orion’s 'big head' was revealed in infrared by the Wide-field Infrared Explorer or Wise Photograph: WISE Team/JPL-Caltech/NASA

This image released by the Nasa Earth Observatory on 23 April is a visualisation of the magnetic field around Earth as it might look from space Photograph: HO/AFP

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasts off from the Satish Dhawan space centre in Sriharikota, India, on 20 April. The rocket carried three satellites: ResourceSat-2, Youthsat and X-SAT. ResourceSat-2 will help map forests and glaciers, and monitor crop yields Photograph: STR/EPA

The delayed final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour is slated to take place on Monday. This is launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center late last month after launch was called off as a result of a mechanical fault, disappointing a huge crowd that included the mission commander's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt earlier this year Photograph: NASA

Final testing of the Soyuz launch site at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana began on 29 April with a simulated launch to ensure Soyuz and the new facilities work together perfectly. The Russian capsule will be the only vehicle capable of ferrying humans to and from the International Space Station after the final shuttle flight later this year
Photograph: ESA