Wally Funk, Pilot Who Flew Briefly to Space at 82, Dies at 87

Wally Funk died Wednesday evening at her apartment in an assisted living facility in Grapevine, Texas. She was 87. Duff O’Dell, a city councilwoman and Funk’s caregiver, said she was at her side. Funk had fallen a couple of times recently and had a leg infection that “took its toll,” O’Dell told the Associated Press.

Born on 1 February 1939, Funk earned her flying licence at Stephens College in Missouri and studied education at Oklahoma State University. She became the only female flight instructor at a U.S. military base and later owned a flying school in Taos, New Mexico.

In 1961 she volunteered for NASA’s Women in Space program and became the youngest graduate of the Mercury 13 group. She spent 10 hours and 35 minutes in a sensory deprivation tank during testing and outperformed astronaut John Glenn on that exercise. Multiple attempts to join NASA’s astronaut corps were rejected because she lacked an engineering degree.

The agency admitted its first female astronauts in 1978, when Funk was 39. Funk served as the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. She logged more than 19,600 flying hours and taught more than 3,000 people to fly.

In July 2021, at age 82, she flew on Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-16 mission, spending three minutes in space during the flight that reached more than 2,500 miles per hour. She set a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman to travel to space and remained the only Mercury 13 member to reach space.

Funk was inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in 2024 and is scheduled for posthumous induction into the International Space Hall of Fame.