awk prints unnecessary new line in output

print adds a newline by default. You can use printf("%s", a[1]); instead or move the printing of a[1] to where all the other fields are being printed. I've renamed the first use of a into b instead be be able to keep the value until later:

grep " 78_" filename | sort -k 3 | \
awk '{split($3,b,"_");split($3,a,"-"); print b[1] ","  $3 "," a[2] "," $5 "," $6 "," $10}'

Output:

78,78_data_store-2021.11.26,2021.11.26,1,1,478.2mb
78,78_data_store-2021.12.12,2021.12.12,1,1,4.1gb
78,78_data_store-2021.12.24,2021.12.24,1,1,372.6mb

Based on your shown samples, please try following awk code. Using Schwartzian transform in awk. Also using awk + sort + awk combination here.

awk '
BEGIN{ OFS="," }
FNR>1 && /78_/{
  split($3,arr,"[_-]")
  print arr[4]"@"arr[1],$3,arr[4],$5,$6,$NF
}
' Input_file | 
sort -t'@' -k1 | 
awk '{sub(/^[^@]*@/,"")} 1'

Explanation for above code:

• Passing Input_file(OP's file) into awk program.
• Setting OFS as comma here for all lines.
• Checking condition if its greater than 1st line and having 78_ in it then only move further.
• Using split function to split 3rd field into an array named arr where delimiters are _- here.
• printing arr[4]"@"arr[1],$3,arr[4],$5,$6,$NF which is as per needed output, only thing is additionally arr[4]@ is added front of the output so that we can sort it easily(could be removed later in this program).
• Passing awk program's output to sort command where setting field separator as @ and sorting it with 1st field(eg: 2021.12.12 in shown samples).
• Passing sorted data to another awk program where removing everything from starting of value till 1st occurrence of @(which was added additionally as mentioned in previous step).

Improvements in OP's attempts:

• We need not to use grep when we are using awk, it can take care of searching string itself, so removed it from answer.
• We need not to use 2 times split that could also be merged into a single split by mentioning multiple separators in split.