Mary Wallace Funk, last surviving member of the Mercury 13 group, passed away on July 8, 2026 at 87.
She was known for a lot of firsts in US history--the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, the first female Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector. As of the writing of this post (in 2026), she was the oldest woman to go into space, traveling on Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft at the age of 82 in 2021. She held the title of oldest person in space for a few months until William Shatner went up at the age of 90 later that year on a different New Shepard flight.
As a member of the Mercury 13 group, Funk underwent (and passed) most of the same testing as the male Mercury 7 astronauts, but never got to go into space as a part of that program--none of the Mercury 13 did. Funk, the youngest member of the group, only got her chance to go into space because Blue Origin offered her a seat on one of their flights--making her the only Mercury 13 member to make it into space, great publicity for Blue Origin.
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