Wally Funk, Oldest Woman in Space, Dies

Funk's path to space stretched across six decades. In the early 1960s she volunteered for a privately funded program that tested whether America's best female pilots could withstand the same rigorous trials as the all-male astronaut corps of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The 13 women who passed became known as the Mercury 13. Funk was the youngest to graduate and, in one test, spent more than 10 hours in a sensory-deprivation tank, outlasting the celebrated astronaut John Glenn. Yet the program, never sanctioned by NASA, was cancelled, and the agency did not admit female astronauts until 1978. Funk applied repeatedly and was always refused, often told that a woman simply could not do the job.

She never stopped flying. In 2021, at the age of 82, Funk finally reached space as an "honored guest" aboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket, briefly becoming the oldest person ever launched, a record later surpassed by the actor William Shatner and Ed Dwight, both 90. She remains the oldest woman to have flown to space. Tributes poured in after her death: Blue Origin called her "a pioneer in every sense of the word," while NASA administrator Jared Isaacman wrote that her "passion for flight, perseverance, and love of exploration will continue to inspire generations." Friends remembered her relentless optimism; as she once vowed to the Guardian, "I'll be flying till I die."