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Wally Funk
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Wally Funk, wearing a red blazer, speaks with hands clasped at the 2022 Michael Collins Trophy presentation at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Aviator Wally Funk stands in a flight suit holding a helmet beside a U.S. Air Force jet, smiling at the camera. Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, and Wally Funk stand in blue flight suits and cowboy hats, holding the Explorers Club flag in front of the New Shepard space capsule.
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Wally Funk, wearing a red blazer, speaks with hands clasped at the 2022 Michael Collins Trophy presentation at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
Wally Funk, history-maker Aviator and astronaut Wally Funk speaking at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in 2022. A year earlier, Funk had become the oldest woman to go to space.

Wally Funk

Oldest woman to go to space
Also known as: Mary Wallace Funk
Written by
Adam Volle
Adam Volle is a freelance writer and editor based in Atlanta, Georgia. 
Adam Volle
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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•History

By the time she was seven years old, Wally Funk was making airplanes out of balsa wood; she had her first flying lesson when she was nine, and when she was in her teens she earned her pilot’s license. What she really wanted to do was be an astronaut, but because of NASA policies that discriminated against women, she had to wait six decades to fulfill that dream. In 2021, at the age of 82,...

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