One of my friends is working on this and I thought people here might find it interesting. It's about the Materials International Space Station experiment where they bolt a briefcase like thing to the side of the ISS for an extended period of time and see what happens to the different materials that were set up inside:

http://blog.al.com/space-news/2011/07/nasa_uses_high-tech_briefcase.html

Elf

Another article about it:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/about/star/index.html#materials

Elf