NASA’s SPHEREx team rings bell at New York Stock Exchange | Space picture of the day for April 23, 2025

Members of NASA’s SPHEREx mission team celebrated Earth Day and the recent launch of the astrophysics observatory by ringing the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange on April 22, 2025.

What is it?

This photo captures the moment that Michael Thelen, NASA’s flight system manager for the SPHEREx observatory, rang the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange on Earth Day, April 22, 2025. Joining him for the honor were other members of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team, as well as team members from BAE Systems Inc., Space & Mission Systems, which built the telescope and spacecraft’s main structure, known as a “bus.”

At 4:00 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) on Tuesday, trading as normal came to an end as the brokers on the stock exchange floor below gathered to hear the bell ding at Thelen’s command.

Where is it?

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

SPHEREx (or Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is in a sun-synchronous, low Earth orbit, circling the planet at about 430 miles (700 kilometers) above the surface. It was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in southern California on March 12, 2025.

Why is it amazing?

Although this is not the first time that NASA has been invited to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange (or NASDAQ), it is still not as common as having businesses who are part of the market or other newsmakers receive the honor.

What is amazing is what the SPHEREx mission promises to answer. SPHEREx was built and launched to collect data on more than 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars in the Milky Way. The information transmitted back to Earth will help improve scientists’ understanding of how the universe evolved, while searching for key ingredients for life in our galaxy.

Want to know more?

You can read about another mission ringing the NYSE bell from space or see the first images taken by SPHEREx. You can also read more about the SPHEREx mission.