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United States News Title: Karen Nyberg Q&A: Why do astronauts come home with vision problems? Leading Women connects you to extraordinary women of our time -- remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science and more. Follow Karen Nyberg on Twitter. (CNN) -- While traveling in the Earth's orbit over 240 miles up, American astronaut Karen Nyberg joined Leading Women anchor Becky Anderson for a live interview from the International Space Station (ISS) Friday. When she's not working on scientific experiments, Nyberg can be found tweeting amazing pictures of the planet, chasing floating desserts in space and knitting. Read on for the full interview. CNN: Station, this is CNN. How do you hear me? Karen Nyberg: Good Morning CNN. This is station. I have you loud and clear. CNN: Simeon Birchall, a CNN.com commenter asks is there huge competition for every seat on a shuttle launch? KN: Well I don't know if I'd say competition. Definitely everybody that is in the astronaut office that wants to fly is very eager to do so even if they have gone before. Generally it's kind of going in order of when a class is selected, they start flying people from that class. And then it depends on what roles are needed. If we need to fly somebody that is going to be the commander of the space station, frequently most often that is somebody who has experience flying; if we need somebody who is going to be doing space walks, we need somebody that can do that. Back when we were flying the shuttle, there were a lot more specific tasks doing robotics ops and the space walks. TIMELINE: 50 years of women in space Now on the space station everybody pretty much has to do everything and so it's a little competitive I guess, but your turn comes along. CNN: @Alizabev asks what type of experiments are you working on? KN: This week we've been doing a lot of experiments on our ocular health. We've noticed some problems over the past several years with many of our astronauts. They come back to Earth after three to six months in space and have long term vision problems, changes in their vision. We are trying to figure out what exactly is causing that. Luca (Parmitano) and I have been involved in numerous tests. We're doing tonometry -- we are looking at the pressure of the eye. We are doing ultrasounds to look at the morphology of the eye, we are doing fundoscopy to take images of the retina, vision tests. We are hoping that we can determine exactly what is causing this and hopefully mitigate the problem, especially if we start longer duration missions going to Mars ... we really need to understand this so we don't degrade the vision of every astronaut that is going into space. Read: Ride, Sally Ride: You remember astronaut who inspired women CNN: A commenter on CNN.com Marik asks what do you think of the Mars One project which aims to privately settle people on the planet?
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