She Passed Every Test in 1961. NASA Said No. At 82, She Flew to Space.

The short answer: Wally Funk was the youngest of the thirteen women pilots — the Mercury 13 — who in 1961 passed the same brutal medical examinations given to America's first male astronauts. She was never allowed to fly. The program was quietly cancelled, not because the women failed, but because the era was not ready. Sixty years later, on July 20, 2021, she finally crossed into space at the age of 82 — the oldest person to fly at that time, and still the oldest woman ever to reach space. She died on July 8, 2026, at 87, the last survivor of the thirteen — and the only one who ever made it.

The Pilot Who Passed Every Test in 1961

Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk was born in 1939 in Taos, New Mexico, to a family that ran a general store. Flight entered her life early — she is said to have touched an airplane's wheel at about one year old. Barred from mechanical drawing and auto mechanics at school because she was a girl, she left for college at sixteen, graduated at the top of the Stephens College flying club, and held a pilot's license at nineteen. At Oklahoma State she was among the finest pilots on the flight team, and in 1960, at twenty-one, she became the first civilian woman flight instructor at the Fort Sill army base. One clarification matters: NASA never selected or trained her as an astronaut. The examinations she passed were run by a private foundation — and that distinction is the heart of this story.

Mercury 13: Tests Passed, Flight Denied

As America raced the Soviet Union into space, Dr. William Lovelace — who had designed the fitness examinations for the male Mercury astronauts — quietly asked whether a woman's body and mind could withstand spaceflight. Financed privately by the pioneering pilot Jacqueline Cochran, his foundation gave women pilots the same tests: ice water in the ears, spinning chairs, a bicycle pedalled to exhaustion. Nineteen women sat for hundreds of examinations; thirteen passed. Funk, the youngest, scored near the top.

Item	Detail
Programme	Privately funded Lovelace Foundation examinations, 1961 — not an official NASA project
Result	13 of 19 women pilots passed; Funk was the youngest and among the highest scorers
Legendary test	10 hours 35 minutes in a sensory-deprivation tank — calm, without a single hallucination
Ending	Follow-up tests at Pensacola were cancelled days before departure; NASA never made the official request the Navy required

Stories of pioneers blocked by their era recur in science history — like the doctor who was called mad for telling doctors to wash their hands, or Grace Hopper, who taught computers to speak English in a field that barely admitted women.

Sixty Years of Closed Doors

• A handwritten sentence: Vice President Lyndon Johnson, on a staff memo about women in space, wrote "Let us stop this now" — a line historians judge froze the discussion for more than a decade.
• The 1962 hearings: Pilots Jerrie Cobb and Jane Hart asked Congress for a chance. Astronaut John Glenn answered that women's absence was "a fact of our social order."
• A key they could never hold: Astronauts had to be military jet test pilots with engineering degrees — and women were barred from those test-pilot schools altogether.
• The world moved on: In 1963 the Soviet Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. America waited until Sally Ride in 1983.

Funk never stopped. She kept flying, teaching, and inspecting aircraft for decades — by her own account, she would be flying until she died. She was not sitting by a closed door; she was spending a lifetime becoming the person ready for the day it opened.

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A Ticket Redeemed at 82

On July 20, 2021 — 52 years to the day after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon — Blue Origin's New Shepard carried Funk to 107 kilometres. At 82 years and 169 days she became the oldest person ever to fly, passing the record of John Glenn: the very man who, in 1962, had voiced the social order that blocked her path. Stepping from the capsule, she smiled: "I have been waiting a long time" — and added that she wanted to go again. Sometimes a door closes not because our skill is lacking, but because the age is not yet ready. Her sixty years ask us how precious our given time is, and what it means to stay faithful to today's work in the sky we are given.

FAQ

Q: Who was Wally Funk?
A: An American pilot who, in 1961, was the youngest of the Mercury 13 women to pass the astronaut fitness examinations, and who finally flew to space in 2021 at age 82.

Q: Was she a NASA astronaut?
A: No. The examinations were run privately by the Lovelace Foundation. NASA never officially requested the follow-up testing, and the women were never given a flight assignment.

Q: What record did she set?
A: On July 20, 2021 she became, at 82, the oldest person to fly to space at that time — and she remains the oldest woman ever to reach space.

Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/MuwjvHAHIJ4

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