Wally Funk, pioneering astronaut and aviator trainee, has died at the age of 87

Wally Funk has died in Texas, aged 87. He was the pioneering aviator and astronaut who, at the dawning of the Space Age with 12 American women, became the oldest person ever to fly into space.

According to the statement, Funk died the night before at her home in Grapevine, Texas. The cause of death wasn't given.

Funk, who had been barred from NASA’s early astronaut corps due to her gender, made headlines when she joined Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, as his honorary guest, along with two other guests, on the inaugural spaceflight Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocketship in July 2021.

She said, "I never thought I would get to go up." In a video posted on Blue Origin website weeks before the flight when Bezos revealed his first crew list.

After a 10-minute suborbital flight, Funk, at the age of 82, became the oldest person to ever reach outer space. He surpassed the record held by John Glenn, a retired Mercury astronaut who returned to space as a U.S. Senator in 1998, when he was 77.

I WANT TO GO AGAIN

Bezos was joined by his brother Mark, and a Dutch 18-year old high school graduate. This is the youngest person ever to have reached space.

After a safe parachute land in the Texas desert on the New Shepard capsule, Funk said to reporters: "I have been waiting for a long time." He added, "I would like to go back, and fast."

With her?broad smile, royal-blue flight suit, and?short, cropped white hair, Funk immediately won a whole new generation of fans on social media. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki called Funk "America's sweetheart."

The record for the oldest person in space was held by Funk for almost three months. That is, until William Shatner - who played Captain Kirk in the 1960s sci fi television series "Star Trek" - launched aboard Blue Origin’s second New Shepard launch flight, which took place on October 20, 2021.

Shatner had 90 years at the time. Ed Dwight, an Air Force veteran, beat Shatner’s record in 2024, when he flew with Blue Origin. He was also 90 years old. Funk is still the oldest woman in history to have travelled to space.

Before achieving her dream of spaceflight Funk trained over 3,000 pilots and logged 19,000 flight hours. She also broke down gender-related barriers in aviation.

Mary Wallace Funk, born in 1939, was the first woman to teach flight at Fort Sill, a U.S. Military base in Oklahoma. She also became the first female inspector of the Federal Aviation Administration, and the first female air safety investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Funk was the youngest woman of the 13 selected to participate in NASA's Mercury program, which sent the first Americans to space between 1961 and 1964.

She outperformed many of her male colleagues on several tests. Mercury 13 was the name given to the women's group, but they were excluded from NASA astronauts at the time due to their gender.

According to the Washington Post, Glenn, who was one of the seven original Mercury astronauts, and the first American in orbit around Earth, once spoke out against enlisting females into the space-flight program.

In contrast, the Soviet Union's arch-enemy during the Cold War, the United States, accepted women early in its program. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to reach space in 1963. Sally Ride was the first woman U.S. space astronaut, and she reached orbit in 1983.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Jamie Freed) Funk was the last member of Mercury 13 to survive. He became the first of the group's members to fly into space. (Reporting and editing by Jamie Freed in Los Angeles, Steve Gorman)

(source: Reuters)