Question: What did Both Dumitru Prunariu and Claude Nicollier had in common?

Context articles: Aubrieta
Mitică
Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia
Dumitru Prunariu
Flute, viola and harp
Claude Nicollier
N. D. Cocea
NASA Astronaut Group 9
Serial imagery
Science and technology in Romania

Aubrieta (commonly known as Aubretia) is a genus of about 12 species of flowering plants in the cabbage family Brassicaceae.
 The genus is named after Claude Aubriet, a French flower-painter.
 It originates from southern Europe east to central Asia but is now a common garden escape throughout Europe.
 It is a low, spreading plant, hardy, evergreen and perennial, with small violet, pink or white flowers, and inhabits rocks and banks.
 It prefers light, well-drained soil, is tolerant of a wide pH range, and can grow in partial shade or full sun.
Mitică (] ) is a fictional character who appears in several sketch stories by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale.
 The character's name is a common hypocoristic form of "Dumitru" or "Dimitrie" (Romanian for "Demetrius").
 He is one of the best-known figures in Caragiale's 1901 collection "Momente şi schiţe", as well as in Romanian humor at large.
 Mitică is a male resident of Bucharest whose background and status are not always clear, generally seen as an allegory of the average Bucharester or through extension, inhabitants of Romania's southern regions—Wallachia and Muntenia.
 According to accounts, he was based on a resident of Sinaia, whom Caragiale had befriended.
Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia is a painting of 1682 in oil on canvas by Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée, traditionally just "Claude" in English), a painter from the Duchy of Lorraine who spent his career in Rome.
 It was painted in Rome for Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna (1637–1689), Claude's most important patron in his last years, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
 It is signed, dated with the year, and inscribed with the subject (at centre bottom), as Claude sometimes did with his less common subjects.
Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu (] ; born 27 September 1952) is a Romanian cosmonaut.
 He flew in space aboard Soyuz 40 spacecraft and Salyut 6 space laboratory.
 He was in team with another Romanian cosmonaut called Dumitru Dediu.
Flute, viola and harp are the instruments of a chamber music grouping that have become common through the establishment of ensembles that feature this set of instruments and have enjoyed new compositions written for the set.
 The first major composition written for the instruments was the Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915) by Claude Debussy; Debussy had set out to compose a set of chamber works for "diverse ensembles," as distinguished from more common groupings like string quartet or piano trio.
 Though other composers have written chamber works that feature harp, this set of instruments has gained a repertoire, which places it among other established genres of the twentieth century such as the "Pierrot ensemble" (flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello, with frequently added percussion or voice).
Claude Nicollier (born 2 September 1944 in Vevey, Switzerland) is the first astronaut from Switzerland.
 He has flown on four Space Shuttle missions.
 His first spaceflight (STS-46) was in 1992, and his final spaceflight (STS-103) was in 1999.
 He took part in two servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope (called STS-61 and STS-103).
 During his final spaceflight he participated in a spacewalk, becoming the first European Space Agency astronaut to do so during a Space Shuttle mission (previous ESA astronauts conducted spacewalks aboard "Mir", see List of spacewalks and moonwalks 1965–1999).
 In 2000 he was assigned to the Astronaut Office Extravehicular Activity Branch, while maintaining a position as Lead ESA Astronaut in Houston.
 Nicollier retired from ESA in April 2007.
N. D. Cocea (common rendition of Nicolae Dumitru Cocea, ] , also known as Niculae, Niculici or Nicu Cocea; November 29, 1880 – February 1, 1949) was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire.
 The founder of many newspapers and magazines, including "Viața Socială", "Rampa", "Facla" and "Chemarea", collaborating with writer friends such as Tudor Arghezi, Gala Galaction and Ion Vinea, he fostered and directed the development of early modernist literature in Romania.
 Cocea later made his name as a republican and anticlerical agitator, was arrested as an instigator during the 1907 peasant revolt, and played a leading role in regrouping the scattered socialist clubs.
 His allegiances however switched between parties: during World War I, he supported the Entente Powers and, as a personal witness of the October Revolution, the government of Soviet Russia, before returning home as a communist.
NASA Astronaut Group 9 was announced on May 29, 1980, and completed their training by 1981.
 This group, composed of 19 candidates, was selected to supplement the 35 astronauts that had been selected in 1978, and marked the first time that non-Americans were trained as mission specialists with the selections of ESA astronauts Claude Nicollier and Wubbo Ockels.
 In keeping with the previous group, astronaut candidates were divided into pilots and mission specialists, with eight pilots, eleven mission specialists, and two international mission specialists within the group.
Serial imagery is the repeating of one image in many variations or forms.
 It is a central idea in modern and contemporary art.
 It can take several forms.
 A portrait can painted in differing hues and backgrounds with subtle changes to the subject as in Van Gogh's L'Arlésienne and Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral Another type is where the same subject is painted at different times of day or seasons of the year for example Claude Monet in his Poplars, Haystacks.
 The same subject may also be rendered in different mediums, and in different poses, thus, the practice of underpainting may be considered a form of serial imagery even if the image is lost in the completed work.
 It is common in photography where multiple exposures at varies angles are taken with different lenses etc. in search of the desired effect.
 It is also used in literature, especially poetry.
On May 14, 1981 Romania became the 11th country in the world to have an astronaut in space.
 That astronaut, Dumitru Prunariu is today's president of Romanian Space Agency.