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 to...