Wally Funk, a pioneering aviator who became the oldest person to travel to space at 82, passed away at 87 in her Texas home. During the early 1960s, she was part of a groundbreaking group of 13 women who qualified for the Woman in Space Program, completing the same rigorous tests as the famous Mercury Seven astronauts. Despite being the youngest candidate and ranking third overall—the only one to pass every test—Funk was never accepted into NASA's astronaut corps when she applied multiple times after the programme opened to women in 1978.

Funk's decades-long aviation career included logging over 19,600 flight hours, training countless pilots, and holding multiple historic firsts, including serving as the FAA's first female inspector and the first woman investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. Her eventual journey to space came through Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle in 2021, where she set the record as the oldest space traveller—a distinction that was later surpassed by William Shatner and subsequently by Ed Dwight.