Aviation pioneer Wally Funk will be a part of Blue Origin’s first crewed area flight | Engadget

Sixty years after excelling within the Mercury 13 program, Wally Funk is lastly going to area. Amazon CEO and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos introduced on Instagram that Funk will probably be on New Shepard’s first crewed flight, which is scheduled for July twentieth.

Funk will be a part of Bezos, his brother Mark and an unidentified winner of an public sale as passengers on Blue Origin’s maiden area tourism flight. Bezos says the quartet will expertise zero gravity for 4 minutes after they journey to the sting of area and that Funk is Blue Origin’s “honored guest.”

The 82-year-old Funk will develop into the oldest particular person to fly to area. The present report holder is John Glenn, who flew on Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission in 1998 on the age of 77. Glenn was one of many Mercury Seven, the astronauts who have been chosen for the United States’ first spaceflight program.

Thirteen girls went by means of the identical checks because the Mercury Seven as a part of the privately funded Women in Space Program. Although the entire Mercury Seven traveled to area, none of Mercury 13 have till now. Funk was the youngest participant in this system and rated third among the many candidates.

Funk was the primary feminine inspector within the Federal Aviation Administration and the primary girl to develop into an air security investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. She has logged greater than 19,600 flying hours and has taught greater than 3,000 individuals to fly. Funk utilized 3 times to hitch NASA’s astronaut program after the company opened it to girls within the late Nineteen Seventies to no avail. Six a long time after Funk’s first makes an attempt to enterprise to area, she’ll lastly get her probability.