Meet Wally Funk, the 82-year-old female aviator on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin flight who's finally going to space six decades after training for it

Funk started making model airplanes from balsa wood when she was seven years old and had her first flying lesson two years later, according to the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum.

Soon after, she became the first female flight instructor at a U.S. military base, Reuters reports.

The privately-funded program was backed by NASA, though the agency didn't officially sponsor it. The group was called the First Lady Astronaut Trainees, or FLATs, but are perhaps better known by the name Mercury 13. Funk was the youngest among them.

The women underwent the same testing as their male counterparts, who were part of NASA's Project Mercury, according to Reuters.

The first phase included 87 tests, ranging from "having to swallow three feet of rubber hose for a stomach test to having 18 needles stuck into your head to record brain waves, to drinking a pint of radioactive water," according to the female pilots organization The Ninety-Nines.

The second phase consisted of psychological testing, including a sensory deprivation scenario, and the third phase included a test simulating the gravitational forces of a spaceflight's lift-off and re-entry, according to The Ninety-Nines.

All of their male peers, known as the Mercury Seven, went on to go to space.

The agency denied her all four times, which Funk attributes to the fact that she didn't have an engineering degree, according to the Amelia Earhart museum.

She has received the FAA Gold Seal and was one of the first 100 women to receive the Airline Transport Rating, according to the Ninety-Nines.

Throughout her career, she has accrued 19,600 flight hours and taught more than 3,000 students to fly, Funk said in an Instagram post.

Funk will overtake former senator and NASA astronaut John Glenn as the oldest US astronaut. Glenn was 77 years old on his last mission.

Joining her are Blue Origin founder and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, his younger brother Mark Bezos, and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen.

In 2010, Funk reportedly put down $200,000 towards a seat onboard a Virgin Galactic flight. Her agent confirmed to Insider recently that Funk is "planning to fly with Virgin Galactic too."