{"id":753267,"date":"2026-07-09T20:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/753267\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T20:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:48:08","slug":"wally-funk-trailblazing-aviator-who-waited-60-years-to-go-to-space-dies-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/753267\/","title":{"rendered":"Wally Funk, trailblazing aviator who waited 60 years to go to space, dies at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"7YYHPS6F2VFADO6RBEJKZLAXDQ\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">When Wally Funk was 5, she donned a Superman cape and leaped from the roof of her family\u2019s barn in New Mexico, dreaming of flight and landing in a haystack. <\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"X4LDYMBOKRGCXNWGCONLL6J7J4\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">She decorated her bedroom ceiling with model planes, earned her pilot\u2019s license as a teenager and began a six-decade journey to space at age 22, joining a private program in 1961 that tested whether the country\u2019s finest female pilots could become astronauts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Wally Funk was 5, she donned a Superman cape and leaped from the roof of her family\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-753267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}