Wally Funk, the pioneering American aviator who broke barriers for women over eight decades and became the oldest woman to fly into space at age 82 in 2021, has died at 87. Funk passed away on 8 July 2026, as confirmed by her family.
Trailblazing aviation career
Funk earned her pilot's licence as a teenager and went on to become the US military's first female flight instructor at age 20. In 1971, she became the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) first female flight inspector, and three years later she was the first woman instructor for the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB). "Aviation has been my whole life; I eat and breathe it," she said in her 2020 memoir, Higher, Faster, Longer, written with Loretta Hall.
Mercury 13 and the fight for space
In 1960, Funk discovered that pilot Jerrie Cobb had been tested for spaceflight. Despite being below the age requirement, she joined the programme that became the Mercury 13, undergoing the same training and testing as the seven male Mercury astronauts. Funk tested top of the group, including spending 10 hours 35 minutes in an isolation tank and having three feet of rubber tubing shoved down her throat. She requested four times to be selected for space flight, but NASA refused to send women into space, accepting only USAF pilots, who were all male.
NASA's resistance persisted even after Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963. Funk had out-tested Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who 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."
Later space dreams and Blue Origin flight
After her rejection by NASA, Funk trained in Russia at the Yuri Gagarin Centre in Star City near Moscow. In 2000, she returned there for zero gravity weightless training in a specially equipped Ilyushin 76 cargo plane. Two decades later, in 2021, she was invited by Jeff Bezos to join a sub-orbital flight on Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft, making her, at 82, the oldest person to fly into space at the time. The flight carried a helmet and goggles worn by Amelia Earhart. "I've been waiting a long time to finally get up there," Funk said after the flight, asking when she could go again. Blue Origin said on her death that they "were humbled to be part of her journey."
Early life and education
Born Mary Wallace Funk on 1 February 1939 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, 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 classes in mechanical drawing, instead enrolling at Stephens College in Missouri, which offered an aviation programme. She later earned a bachelor of science degree from Oklahoma State University, competing for their aviation team, the Flying Aggies.
Career and advocacy
Funk trained more than 800 pilots at her flight school in Taos and flew for Sierra Pacific Airlines. She competed in many air races, including the transcontinental Powder Puff Derby. She became a spokesperson for women's equality, saying: "Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They said 'well you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said 'guess what, doesn't matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it.'"
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 space flight, she received astronaut wings, and a young person's book based on her memoir was published in 2025.
