name. He remained a member through the series' cancellation with issue 25 (April 2010), but the team disbanded after The Thanos Imperative (Dec 2010). Vance Astro appeared along with the rest of the original Guardians of the Galaxy team in the 2014 series Guardians 3000. Writer Dan Abnett described him as "the inspirational spirit" of the team. Fictional character biography Project: Starjump Vance Astrovik was born in Saugerties, New York, the only son of a small-town butcher Arnold Astrovik and his wife Norma. Going into the U.S. Air Force at the age of 18, Astrovik (who changed his name to Astro when he was 21) became the youngest man to be accepted into the astronaut training program several years later. In 1988, Astro volunteered for the first crewed interstellar mission ever conducted by the United States, Project: Starjump. His ship, Odysseus I, was not equipped for faster-than-light speed; hence the journey to Earth's nearest interstellar neighbor, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, would take about 10 centuries. To protect him from aging, Astro was covered with a skin-preserving copper alloy (which was upgraded with adamantium in the Guardians of the Galaxy series) body-suit, and his blood was transfused with a kind of preservative fluid. Astro was launched into space from the Houston Airport in the fall of 1988. While on his way to Alpha Centauri, the ship automatically awoke him from his suspended animation in order for him to perform routine course adjustments. During the periods he was awake, sometimes for a year in duration, Astro eventually went insane from loneliness on several occasions, returning to a semblance of normality only after the ship automatically put him back in suspended animation again. During his long periods of sustained dream-state activities, Astro's latent psionic powers emerged. By the time he arrived on Centauri IV almost a thousand years later, he had full control over his psychokinetic abilities. Arrival at Centauri IV and formation of the Guardians Upon arrival, Astro learned that other humans had arrived at Centauri IV centuries earlier, having developed a faster-than-light drive since the time he left. Although they were unable to intercept his flight, the Centaurian people welcomed him as a hero. Upset at having sacrificed his life on Earth for no purpose, Astro was determined to carry out the mission to categorize the plant life he was assigned a millennium ago, even though it would