Wally Funk, aviation pioneer and oldest woman to go into space, dies at 87

Wally Funk, the aviation pioneer who was turned away from becoming a NASA astronaut only to make history decades later, has died at the age of eighty-seven. According to The Guardian, Funk was one of the women who passed the same rigorous testing as the Mercury astronauts in the early nineteen sixties but was never given the chance to fly. In twenty twenty-one, at the age of eighty-two, she finally reached space aboard a Blue Origin flight, becoming the oldest woman ever to do so. She died peacefully on Wednesday evening at an assisted living facility in Grapevine, Texas, with a close friend and caregiver at her side. Funk had suffered a couple of recent falls and a leg infection that, in her caregiver's words, took its toll.

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