Wally Funk, an American aviator and spaceflight participant, died on July 8 at age 87 in Grapevine, Texas, after a career that spanned six decades of aviation and a historic suborbital spaceflight in July 2021.

She earned her pilot’s license as a teenager and joined a private astronaut training program in 1961 that tested female pilots for potential NASA selection.

Funk was among the 13 women known as the Mercury 13, a group that underwent physiological tests similar to those of the Mercury Seven astronauts but was never selected for spaceflight.

She later became the Federal Aviation Administration’s first female safety inspector in 1971 and served as one of the National Transportation Safety Board’s early air safety investigators.

In July 2021, at age 82, she flew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket as an honored guest, reaching an altitude of more than 60 miles and experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness before landing in West Texas.

Her flight made her the oldest person to reach space at that time, a record later broken by William Shatner and Ed Dwight.

The capsule carried Funk, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, his brother, and a Dutch teenager more than 60 miles above the ground after launching from a desert site in West Texas.

She logged 19,600 hours of flight time and taught more than 3,000 people to fly, according to Blue Origin’s announcement.

Funk said after the flight that she wanted to go again, and in an Instagram video posted by Bezos she remarked that nothing had prevented her from pursuing the goal.

Her interest in space dated to a 1960 Life magazine article about pilot Jerrie Cobb, which led her to apply for the women’s astronaut testing program.

The tests included immersion in ice water, ingestion of a pint of radioactive water, isolation in a temperature‑controlled tank, and centrifuge and high‑altitude chamber exercises.

Beyond aviation safety, she competed in air races, worked as a civilian flight instructor, and continued to seek higher altitudes through personal training.

The city of Grapevine announced her death on July 8 but did not disclose a cause.

Funk’s journey from a 1960s test program to a 2021 suborbital flight illustrates a long‑term effort to expand access to space, and her record was later surpassed by other older travelers.