An astronaut orbiting Earth for months experiences what is commonly called weightlessness. What does this term actually mean, according to the description of an astronaut's orbit?

1. Weightlessness does not mean the gravitational force on the astronaut has vanished, since there is no zero gravity in an astronaut's orbit. 2. The term instead means the astronaut is in free fall, continuously accelerating at the local acceleration due to gravity along with the spacecraft around them. 3. Because the astronaut and the spacecraft fall together at the same rate, there is no normal force between them, which produces the sensation of weightlessness. 4. The astronaut still exerts a real gravitational pull on Earth, by Newton's third law, and there is no real outward force cancelling gravity anywhere in this description. _Source: OpenStax College Physics (CC BY 4.0), Ch 6 "Uniform Circular Motion and Gravitation", section 6.5 Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation_