She should have gone into space 60 years ago, but was told it was not a woman’s place.

Now, at the age of 82, that wrong is being righted and Wally Funk will finally get her chance.

Ms Funk will blast off on a rocket later this month alongside Jeff Bezos, and in the process become the world’s oldest space traveller.

In 1961, when she was 21, Ms Funk was the youngest member of Nasa’s Mercury 13 Woman in Space programme.

Thirteen women underwent the same rigorous testing as the group of seven male test pilots – the “Mercury 7” – who became America’s celebrated first group of astronauts.

None of the women flew to space, denied their astronaut wings because of their gender. Ms Funk had been top of the class.

“Nasa told me that I had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys,” she said.

“But they said, ‘Well, you’re a girl, you can’t do that’. I didn’t think I’d ever get to go up.”

Bezos’s Blue Origin company will make its maiden crewed flight on July 20 from Texas.

The planet’s richest man said Ms Funk would be an “honoured guest” aboard with him, his brother Mark and the winner of an online auction.

He told her: “No one has waited longer. It’s time. Welcome to the crew, Wally. We’re excited to have you fly with us.”

Ms Funk will become the oldest person to go to space, dethroning the late John Glenn, who was 77 when he flew on a space shuttle in 1998. Glenn was also a Mercury 7 astronaut.

It was not until 1983 that the first US woman, Sally Ride, went into space.

Blue Origin’s 11-minute sub-orbital journey will see the crew ascend more than 100km and briefly experience weightlessness.