The world's oldest space traveler, Grapevine's Wally Funk, is blasting off from Van Horn, Texas today aboard New Shepard, a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing, crew-rated suborbital launch vehicle that is being developed by Blue Origin, built by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is also one of today's passengers.
Funk is 82-years-old now.
When she was 21, she volunteered for and was accepted to be part of the Mercury 13 program, the thirteen American women who successfully completed the same physiological screening tests as the astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury two years earlier.
But, since there were no women astronauts then, she never flew in space.
But today is her day. And her church, White's Chapel United Methodist in Southlake, is hosting a watch party this morning open to all. The live-stream begins at 7 a.m. with the launch expected at 8 a.m.
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