82-year-old Wally Funk will be the oldest person in space
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An 82-year-old American woman named Wally Funk is set to become the oldest person in space this July. She will go to space on Blue Origin’s first crewed flight, New Shephard.
Funk is a pilot who has spent her life preparing for this moment. She was actually part of Mercury 13 – the first group of women trained to fly to space from 1960-1961. Mercury was not a government programme but they went through the same training as NASA astronauts at that time. But at that time, NASA left them out of space missions because they were women.
Moreover, Funk was also the first woman to be an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US.
New Shephard
Now, New Shephard will fly on 20 July, and Funk will be on it. Along with her on the flight will be Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother and a mystery person. It was Jeff Bezos who invited her on the flight. Funk says she is very excited about the trip and she can hardly wait for it.
The space flight will launch from a desert in western Texas, US. It will last about 10 minutes. During that time, they will go above the Karman line. This line marks the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
Another space travel company, Virgin Galactic, has also announced that its first passenger space flight will happen on 11 July 2021.
82-year-old Wally Funk will become the oldest person to go to space.
She was supposed to go 60 years ago.
Now, she’s going with Jeff Bezos.pic.twitter.com/OdSfBBAc0R
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) July 1, 2021
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