ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) brought 7.5 tonnes of equipment, water and air to the ISS crew on its maiden flight, and has been used as a temporary leisure centre and sleeping area for the past five months.

Carrying refuse, it will automatically undock from the station at 2130 GMT on Friday, ESA said in a press release.

Its engines will use some of the remaining fuel to park the 13.5-tonne craft in a new orbit over the following three weeks.

On September 29, the ATV will be sent plummeting on a suicidal re-entry path, designed to cause it to burn up in the upper atmosphere over a "completely uninhabited" area of the Pacific, the agency said.

Tethered to the ISS, the ATV carried out four operations to boost the station to a safe height of 355 kilometres (221 miles) in order to overcome residual atmospheric drag.

On August 27, it was also used to steer the ISS out of the path of potentially dangerous orbiting debris.

The first ATV -- named after the 19th-century French sci-fi pioneer Jules Verne -- has been hugely esteemed by the ISS's three crew, Sergei Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Greg Chamitoff, ESA said.

"It became one of the best places for the crew to live," said French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, who advised ESA on how the freighter could be turned to human use.

Jules Verne's destruction has been scheduled to take place at night so that scientists can gain an insight into how large objects behave when they de-orbit.

NASA is deploying two aircraft laden with radar, ultra-violet and other sensors to monitor the burnup.

The Jules Verne measures 10 metres (32.5 feet) in length, offering 50 cubic metres (1,765 cu. feet), or nearly the capacity of a large shipping container.

Designed and built for 1.3 billion euros (1.885 billion dollars), the craft is Europe's costliest contribution to the ISS. It will be followed by four more cargo ships, whose assembly and launch will each cost over 300 million euros (435 million dollars).

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