US astronaut Michael Finke and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalk will make the spacewalk together in order to install reflectors on the outside of the station which will allow the cargo vessel to dock automatically, the centre's press service added.

The spacewalk is scheduled to take around six hours.

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), a 20-tonne unmanned vessel, will bring fuel, oxygen, water and provisions for the crew. The vessel will also correct the station's orbit and compensate for its regular losses of altitude.

The ATV will be launched into orbit from an Ariane-5 rocket which will blast off from Kourou in French Guiana "in October 2005" the European Space Agency's (ESA) representative in Russia, Alain Fournier-Sicre, told AFP.

Since the Columbia shuttle disaster in February 2003, Russia's Progress cargo ships have been the only way to send supplies to the ISS.

This will be the third spacewalk undertaken by the current crew who have been in orbit since April.

SPACE.WIRE