Wally Funk, the groundbreaking aviator who spent decades fighting gender barriers in aviation and ultimately soared to space at age 82, has died at her home in Grapevine, Texas — a suburb of Dallas — at the age of 87.
The city of Grapevine announced her passing Thursday in a statement shared on social media, noting she died the evening before. No cause of death was provided.
Funk had been denied a place in NASA’s early astronaut program solely because of her gender, but she made international headlines in July 2021 when billionaire Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos invited her as his honored guest on the very first crewed flight of his company Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. She was joined by Bezos, his brother Mark, and an 18-year-old Dutch high school graduate who became the youngest person ever to reach space.
When Bezos first announced his crew weeks before liftoff, Funk reflected on the moment in a video posted to Blue Origin’s website. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to go up,” she said.
The suborbital trip lasted about 10 minutes but made history — at 82, Funk became the oldest human being ever to reach outer space, breaking the record previously held by retired Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 when he flew aboard a NASA space shuttle in 1998 as a sitting U.S. senator.
After the New Shepard capsule touched down safely on the Texas desert floor via parachute, an elated Funk stepped out and told reporters, “I’ve been waiting a long time,” before enthusiastically adding, “I want to go again, fast.”
Her wide smile, royal blue flight suit, and short white hair made her an instant sensation. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki even declared her “America’s new sweetheart.”
Her record as the oldest person in space lasted nearly three months, until actor William Shatner — best known for playing Captain Kirk on the 1960s science fiction television series “Star Trek” — flew on Blue Origin’s second New Shepard mission in October 2021 at age 90. Air Force veteran Ed Dwight later surpassed Shatner’s record, also at age 90, on a Blue Origin flight in 2024. Nevertheless, Funk remains the oldest woman ever to have traveled to space.
Long before her historic spaceflight, Funk had built an extraordinary aviation career. She trained more than 3,000 pilots, logged over 19,000 hours in the air, and shattered one gender barrier after another throughout her life.
Born in 1939, Mary Wallace Funk became the first female flight instructor at a U.S. military base — Fort Sill in Oklahoma — as well as the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
In 1961, she was the youngest of 13 women who successfully completed the same demanding physical and psychological testing required of the seven men chosen for NASA’s original Mercury program, which sent the first Americans to space between 1961 and 1963. Known as the Mercury 13, this group of women outperformed many of their male counterparts — Funk herself scored higher than many of the men on several tests. Despite their achievements, the women were barred from NASA’s astronaut corps because of their gender.
John Glenn, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts and the first American to orbit Earth, had at one point testified before Congress against allowing women into the spaceflight program, according to the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union — America’s chief rival in the Cold War space race — had embraced women in its program. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963. It wasn’t until 1983 that the first American woman, Sally Ride, reached orbit.
Funk was the last surviving member of the Mercury 13, and ultimately the only one among them to make it to space.
