Shares of Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) were up 9.4% as of 1:30 p.m. ET Friday after the commercial spaceliner completed its sixth spaceflight in as many months.

It certainly helps that the broader market is rallying today -- with both the Nasdaq Composite and S 500 indexes up more than 1% as of this writing. But today's outsize rally for Virgin Galactic comes on the heels of its latest successful spaceflight yesterday, dubbed Galactic 05, which highlighted the unique suborbital science-lab capabilities of the company's spaceflight platform.

Yesterday's flight carried not only one private astronaut named Ketty Pucci-Sisti Maisonrouge, to the edge of space, but also two experiments tended by planetary scientist Alan Stern and bioastronautics researcher Kellie Gerardi. The experiments included a biomedical harness to collect physiological data related to human spaceflight, that also allowed Stern to conduct practice routines and procedures in preparation for a future NASA-funded suborbital research flight.

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Source Fool.com