We report the tentative detection in space of the nitrosylium ion, NO + . The observations were performed towards the cold dense core Barnard 1-b. The identification of the NO + J=2-1 line is supported by new laboratory measurements of NO + rotational lines up to the J=8-7 transition (953207.189 MHz), which leads to an improved set of molecular constants: B 0 = 59597.1379(62) MHz, D 0 = 169.428(65) kHz, and eQq 0 (N) = −6.72(15) MHz. The profile of the feature assigned to NO + exhibits two velocity components at 6.5 and 7.5 km s −1 , with column densities of 1.5 × 10 12 and 6.5 × 10 11 cm −2 , respectively. New observations of NO and HNO, also reported here, allow to estimate the following abundance ratios: X(NO)/X(NO + )≃ 511, and