Wally Funk, last of Mercury 13 and oldest woman in space, dies at 87

Wally Funk, who in 2021 became the oldest woman to fly into space—60 years after she and 12 other women sought the same opportunity as NASA’s original astronauts—died on Wednesday at 87 years old.

Funk was the last living member of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs, or as they were later dubbed by the media, the Mercury 13), a group of women pilots who volunteered to go through the same physical and psychological tests as the United States’ first spacemen.

Despite performing as well or better than their male counterparts, though, the Lovelace Woman in Space Program was conducted separately from NASA, and the space agency required that its astronauts be test pilots with jet time. The U.S. military, however, did not accept women into its flight programs.

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