Six decades after Funk's first attempts to venture to space, she'll finally get her chance. Wally Funk reacts after receiving her astronauts wings from Blue Origins Jeff Ashby, a former space shuttle commander at a post-launch press conference after she flew with three crewmates on. Funk applied three times to join NASA's astronaut program after the agency opened it to women in the late 1970s to no avail. This morning Wally Funk, age 82, who once trained to be an astronaut in the 1960s as one of the Mercury 13, became the oldest person ever to fly to space. She has logged more than 19,600 flying hours and has taught more than 3,000 people to fly. Funk was the youngest participant in the program and rated third among the candidates.įunk was the first female inspector in the Federal Aviation Administration and the first woman to become an air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. Although all of the Mercury Seven traveled to space, none of Mercury 13 have until now.
Thirteen women went through the same tests as the Mercury Seven as part of the privately funded Women in Space Program. Glenn was one of the Mercury Seven, the astronauts who were selected for the United States' first spaceflight program. When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered her a seat on the first crewed flight of his space tourism enterprise Blue Origin, it was an invitation aviator Wally Funk had waited six decades to receive. The current record holder is John Glenn, who flew on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission in 1998 at the age of 77. The 82-year-old Funk will become the oldest person to fly to space.
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Update your settings here, then reload the page to see it. Mary Holsenbeck, to talk about her time training to be an astronaut.
This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. When Wally Funk was 8 years old, she jumped off the roof of her barn while wearing.
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