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.
About a month later Alan Shepard, Jr. became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, when he was launched aboard Mercury-Redstone 3. His 15-minute flight, dubbed Freedom 7, was watched by some 45 million television viewers. Between 1961 and 1963, six manned spacecraft flew as part of the Mercury project.