Wally Funk

Wally Funk was an American aviator who became a commercial astronaut late in life. Born in New Mexico in 1939, she trained as a pilot in her youth and went on to a string of firsts in aviation: the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector and the first female air safety investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board. She was also one of the Mercury 13, a group of women who underwent astronaut-style testing in the early 1960s but were never sent to space. On July 20, 2021, at the age of 82, she flew on Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital flight, becoming the oldest person to reach space at that time and the only member of the Mercury 13 to make the journey.