The shuttle, with its six-member crew, is visiting the platform to continue construction work on the orbiting outpost.

During the next week, a new 13.5-metre-long (45 feet) girder, or truss, will be fitted to the ISS to extend its backbone.

British-born astronaut Piers Sellers will play a key role in the task. He will make three spacewalks in the course of the next few days to work on the exterior of the platform.

He may even break the record for the longest ever spacewalk of eight hours and 56 minutes set by Americans James Voss and Susan Helms in 2000.

The $390m, 14-tonne aluminium girder contains a new external cooling system for the ISS and is part of a framework that will hold electricity-generating solar wings and radiators needed for future laboratories.

It will form part of a structure that will eventually stretch 107 metres (350 ft) - the longest structure ever built in space.

Atlantis is also delivering supplies to Expedition 5, the resident crew on the ISS.

Valery Korzun, Sergei Treschev and Peggy Whitson are not due back on Earth until November.

They will take delivery of a new treadmill base, tools, computer and camera equipment and fresh food, including fresh fruit, hot sauce and a pecan pie.

Atlantis left Earth on Monday. It is commanded by Jeffrey Ashby and includes pilot Pamela Melroy, flight engineer Sandra Magnus, astronaut David Wold and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin - as well as Piers Sellers.