Wally Funk, an 82-year-old New Mexico woman who was part of the Mercury 13 women who trained for space flight in the 1960s, will join Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on the maiden manned flight from his Blue Origin space company scheduled in late January, the BBC reports.

Funk was one of thirteen American women who were trained, through a privately funded project, using the same criteria and tests instituted to prepare the male Mercury Seven for space flight.  The Mercury 13 trainees were not sanctioned by NASA, they never met as a group, and they ultimately were never considered for a NASA mission.  It would be twenty years before the first American woman was launched into space as part of a NASA mission.

In a video posted online by Bezos in which he tells Funk she would be accompanying him into space, Funk says, “I can’t tell people watching how fabulous I feel to have been picked by Blue Origin to go on this trip.” 

A true pioneer in aviation, Funk became the first female air safety investigator for the National Transport Safety Board and the first woman to be an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration.  She has put a $200,000 down payment on a flight for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic program, which recently got FAA approval to take passengers into space.

The Blue Origin flight will launch a capsule with six passengers into space during which the crew capsule will stay in space for ten minutes.  The final seat on the flight was awarded to an as-yet unnamed person who paid $28 million for the opportunity.