Wally Funk, the pioneering American aviator who became the oldest woman in space at age 82 aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket in 2021, has died at the age of 87. Funk, who earned her pilot's licence as a teenager and became the US military's first female flight instructor at 20, broke barriers for women in aviation for eight decades.
A lifetime in aviation
Funk's career spanned from the 1950s into the 2020s. She was the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) first female flight inspector in 1971 and the first woman instructor for the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) in 1974. She trained more than 800 pilots at her flight school in Taos, New Mexico, and flew in numerous competitions, including the transcontinental Powder Puff Derby.
In her 2020 memoir, Higher, Faster, Longer (written with Loretta Hall), Funk said: "Aviation has been my whole life; I eat and breathe it."
The Mercury 13 and denied spaceflight
In 1960, Funk joined the private programme that became the Mercury 13, a group of women who underwent the same training and testing as the seven male Mercury astronauts. She tested top of the group, including spending 10 hours 35 minutes in an isolation tank and enduring three feet of rubber tubing shoved down her throat. Despite requesting four times to be selected for spaceflight, NASA refused because they required USAF pilots, who were all male at the time.
John Glenn, the Mercury astronaut and later senator, told Congress in 1962: "The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order."
Spaceflight at last
After decades of waiting, Funk joined Jeff Bezos and his brother on a sub-orbital flight aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard on 20 July 2021. At 82, she became the oldest person to fly into space at the time, a record later broken by William Shatner (90) and Ed Dwight. She remains the oldest woman in space. Blue Origin said on her death that they "were humbled to be part of her journey".
After the flight, Funk said: "I've been waiting a long time to finally get up there," and asked when she could go again. The crew took a helmet and goggles worn by Amelia Earhart.
Early life and education
Born Mary Wallace Funk in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on 1 February 1939, she grew up in Taos, where her parents ran a five-and-dime store. She began flying at age five, jumping from a barn onto a bale of hay wearing a Superman cape. She quit high school at 16 when denied mechanical drawing classes, enrolling at Stephens College in Missouri, which offered an aviation programme. She later earned a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma State University, competing with the Flying Aggies.
Legacy and honours
Funk was elected to the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame in 1995 and joined the Wall of Honor at the National Air and Space Museum in 2017. After her spaceflight, she received astronaut wings, and a young person's book based on her memoir was published in 2025. Funk died on 8 July 2026.
