The female astronaut who was killed on the space shuttle was Christa McAuliffe.
Christa McAuliffe was a payload specialist and a teacher on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-L, which sadly and tragically ended in disaster just shortly after liftoff on January 28th 1986.
Another female astronaut named Juidth Resnik was also killed on the same mission and another female astronaut named Kalpana Chawla, died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1st 2003.
The first female astronaut who was Sally Ride passed away at the age of 61 after a 17 month battle with pancreatic cancer.
Sally Ride the first female astronaut and first American woman in space passed away from the pancreatic cancer at the age of 61 on July 23rd 2012.
Wally Funk was the 82 year old woman in space.
82 year old Wally Funk, flew on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket on July 20th 2021.
Wally Funk became the oldest person to travel to space at the time.
Wally Funk was also one of the Mercury 13 female pilots that trained for space missions in the 1960s.
Wally Funk's remarkable octogenarian's life-long passion for aeronautics made her an inspirational teacher and figurehead as well as a record-breaking astronaut.
Arriving onboard the ISS for Expedition 51, Peggy Whitson (56 at the time) became the oldest woman to fly into space.
After taking command of the mission, she became the first woman to command two ISS expeditions.
There are no age restrictions for the program to go to space.
Astronaut candidates selected in the past have ranged between the ages of 26 and 46, with the average age being 34.