Wally Funk, the oldest woman ever to travel to space and a trailblazing figure in American aviation, died peacefully on Wednesday evening surrounded by family in Grapevine, Texas. She was 87. Blue Origin confirmed her death on social media, calling her "a pioneer in every sense of the word."
Funk trained more than 3,000 pilots across a career spanning over 30,000 flight hours. She became the first female flight instructor at a U.S. military base, the first female inspector at the Federal Aviation Administration, and the first female air safety investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board. In 1961, she was selected for the Mercury 13 program, passing the same physical tests as NASA's first astronauts before the government shut the program down because the participants were women.
Decades later, on July 20, 2021, Funk flew aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard alongside Jeff Bezos, setting a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman in space at age 82. She will be posthumously inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame.