A preauthorization is a temporary hold placed on a credit or debit card. It is not an actual charge, although it does temporarily make the hold amount unavailable until the settlement or transaction clears. Companies use preauthorizations to help secure payment.
Astronaut is the term the US uses for a person who goes into space, cosmonaut is the Russian term. The first astronaut to fly into space was Alan Shepard, who flew the Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 on a 15-minute suborbital flight on May 5, 1961. However, the first person to fly in space was Yuri Gagarin, who orbited the earth three times on April 12, 1961. Although this was 23 days before Shepard's flight, since Gagarin flew on Soviet spacecraft he was a cosmonaut, not an astronaut.
In 1983 space shuttle astronaut Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in space as part of the Challenger crew. The program was a tremendous success for NASA, but it also endured several tragedies.