Wally Funk became the oldest person to reach space on Tuesday — some 60 years after first undergoing astronaut training.
Ms Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13 group of women who trained to become NASA astronauts in the 1960s but was passed over because of her gender.
She was 21 at the time, the youngest of the group of women who passed the same rigorous testing as the Mercury Seven male astronauts in NASA's program that first sent Americans into space between 1961 and 1963.
"I didn't think I'd ever get to go up," Ms Funk said in a video interview posted on the company's website.
But on Tuesday, at the age of 82, she was one of Jeff Bezos' three co-passengers aboard his company Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle to take a historic suborbital flight.
She set the new record as the oldest person to launch into space, beating the late John Glenn, who set a record at age 77 when flying aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998.
"I've been waiting a long time," Ms Funk said afterward.
Ms Funk joined Mr Bezos's brother Mark, and Oliver Daeman, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands who on Tuesday became the youngest person to fly to space.
Their trip to the edge of space lasted a total of 10 minutes and 10 seconds, and reached an altitude of about 106 kilometres.
"I felt like I was just laying down. I was just laying down and I was going into space," Ms Funk said.
Ms Funk was the first female flight instructor at a US military base and the first woman to become an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
"And I didn't do dolls … I did outside stuff. I flew airplanes, 19,000 some hours. I loved it and I loved being here with all of you, your family," she told Mr Bezos, adding she will "cherish that forever".
During their several minutes of weightlessness, video from inside the capsule showed the four floating, doing somersaults, tossing Skittles and throwing balls, with lots of cheering, whooping and exclamations of "Wow!"
After the flight, crewmembers hugged their family and friends, while congratulations came from Sir Richard Branson, who rocketed to the edge of space in Virgin Galactic last week, and NASA.
Ms Funk also gained a new generation of admirers on social media and beyond.
"Wally Funk is now on my list of people that I would most like to meet in the country. She is America's new sweetheart," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters.
The crew took a number of mementos with them for the trip, including a piece of fabric from the Wright brothers' first plane, a bronze medallion made from the first hot air balloon flight in 1783, and a pair of goggles that belonged to Amelia Earhart.
Mr Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, said this first crewed space flight was a step toward developing a fleet of reusable spacecraft.
Blue Origin plans for two more New Shepard passenger flights this year.
Mr Bezos said Blue Origin has not determined its pace of flights after that but is approaching $100 million in private sales.
Reuters/ABC
