Sixty years after acing astronaut tests but barred because she was a woman, Wally Funk will rocket into space alongside Jeff Bezos in just three weeks.

Bezos' company Blue Origin announced Thursday that the pioneering pilot will be aboard the July 20 launch from West Texas, flying in the capsule as an "honored guest." She'll join Bezos, his brother and the winner of a $28 million charity auction, as the first people to ride a New Shepard rocket.

At 82, she'll be the oldest person to launch into space.

Funk was the youngest of the so-called Mercury 13 women who went through astronaut testing in the early 1960s, but never made it to space - or even NASA's astronaut corps - because they were female. Back then, all of NASA's astronauts were male military test pilots.

Funk said she feels "fabulous" about finally getting the chance to go to space.

"I'll love every second of it. Whoooo! Ha-ha. I can hardly wait," Funk said in an Instagram video posted by Bezos.

"Nothing has ever gotten in my way," she added. "They said, 'Well, you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said, 'Guess what, doesn't matter what you are. You can still do it if you want to do it and I like to do things that nobody has ever done."

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