Wally Funk, Mercury 13 Aviator and Oldest Woman in Space, Dies at 87

Wally Funk, a pioneering aviator and the last surviving member of the Mercury 13 group, has died at the age of 87. She was part of the Mercury 13, a group of women who passed the same rigorous tests as NASA's male astronauts in the early 1960s but were never selected for spaceflight. Funk finally reached space in 2021 aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket alongside Jeff Bezos, becoming the oldest person to fly in space at the time. She had famously expressed her long-held dream of reaching space, saying she had been waiting a long time to get there.