82-year old Wally Funk to join Jeff Bezos space flight
She will join the Amazon founder, his brother Mark and a mystery person who paid $28 million at auction for a seat
An 82-year-old woman who has spent six decades trying to reach space will join Jeff Bezos on the first human flight by his space company later this month.
Wally Funk, who underwent training in the 1960s, will become the oldest person to ever fly to space, reports the BBC.
Bezos has invited Funk as an "honoured guest" and shared video on Instagram of him telling her the news.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
She will join the Amazon founder, his brother Mark and a mystery person who paid $28 million at auction for a seat.
The company plans to launch its passengers more than 100km (62 miles) above the Earth's surface, allowing them to experience microgravity.
The capsule will then return to Earth using parachutes on a trip expected to last about 10 minutes.
In a two-minute clip posted online, Mr Bezos is seen telling Ms Funk that she has been chosen for the trip.
"I didn't think I'd ever get to go up," she says in the video.
Born in New Mexico in 1939, Wally Funk says she has had a life-long love of aviation.
She has logged 19,600 flight hours across her career and taught some 3,000 people to fly.
The 82-year-old has already made history a number of times - serving as the first female air safety investigator for the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) and the first woman to be an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US.
