A pioneer of the early space program and the oldest woman to go into space has died.
Wally Funk was 87 years old.
She passed away on July 8 at her apartment in an assisted living facility in Grapevine, Texas, her caregiver, city councilwoman Duff O’Dell, said, according to The Associated Press.
O’Dell said Funk had fallen a few times recently and had a leg infection before her death.
An official cause of death was not released, The Washington Post reported.
Funk was part of the Mercury 13 team of women who were training alongside the men in the early 1960s, but who never had the opportunity with NASA to go into space.
Funk was the youngest woman to pass the tests to join the cew. She tried four times throughout her career to become a NASA astronaut, The Washington Post reported. When that failed, she set her sights on space tourism, applying for a seat in her 70s.
She was the only one of the 13 female pilots to eventually make the trip, thanks to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket, which blasted off in 2021, making her the oldest woman to launch, the AP reported. She also held the record for being the oldest person to go into space at age 82. William Shatner and Ed Dwight tied for the record at the age of 90 when they flew with Blue Origin.
The company paid tribute to her, writing on X that she was a “pioneer in every sense of the word” and “We were humbled to be part of her journey.”
We are deeply saddened by the passing of Wally Funk.
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 9, 2026
Wally was a pioneer in every sense of the word. In her 20s, she was the first female civilian flight instructor at a U.S. military base. She became the youngest of the Mercury 13, outperforming nearly every test put in front… pic.twitter.com/XIDWFXSfaq
Bezos also posted, calling her “fearless, joyful, and asking to go again before we’d even landed.”
Wally Funk waited 60 years to get to space, and no one ever earned it more. She trained with the Mercury 13 in 1961, out-tested the men, and was told no anyway. She never stopped flying — 19,600 hours, thousands of students, a lifetime of firsts.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) July 9, 2026
Five years ago this month, I had… pic.twitter.com/E8VgOZSpSe
She said when she got news of her Blue Origin trip, “I didn’t think that I would ever get to go up. Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They said, ‘Wally, 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.’ And I like to do things that nobody has ever done.”
NASA paid tribute to Funk on its history Facebook account, calling her a “trailblazing aviator” and wishing her “Godspeed.”
Funk was the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, and the first National Transportation Safety Board female air safety investigator, a biography released by the City of Grapevine said, according to the AP.
“In flying, you’re always preparing for an alternative,” she told the Dallas Morning News, the Post reported. “So I went to my alternative. I’m still kicking in doors to keep on going.”
She was inducted into the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame in 1995.
Funk was born Mary Wallace Funk III in 1939 and grew up in Taos, New Mexico. Her parents, who owned a five-and-dime shop, encouraged her to pursue anything that interested her, from horse riding to marksmanship to flying.
“I did everything that people didn’t expect a girl to do,” she said, according to the Post.
She had a ski accident over Christmas break when she was 16, fracturing two vertebrae and being told she would never walk again. When she returned to school at Stephens College in Missouri, her counselor suggested taking aviation classes to distract her from her recovery.
Funk graduated in 1958 and went to Oklahoma State University, studying secondary education, but kept flying in collegiate air meets.
She never married and had no immediate survivors, the Post reported.
©2026 Cox Media Group
