The six shuttle astronauts hugged and shook hands with the orbiting laboratory's three occupants after a busy week that included three spacewalk to hook up two solar arrays that will double the station's power capabilities.
Atlantis pilot Chris Ferguson pulled the spacecraft off the orbiting laboratory and performed a 360-degree flight around the ISS so astronauts could take pictures of the newly expanded space station.
Ferguson then guided Atlantis away from the ISS and will keep it 74 kilometres from the station for a final inspection of the shuttle's heat shield.
Checks for damage
The crew will use a camera at the end of the orbiter's robotic arm to scan the shuttle's nose cap and wing leading edges for possible damage from micrometeorites.
The shuttle will remain at a safe distance from the ISS in case it needs to return to the station due to damage on its protective skin.
The procedure is part of new safety measures created after the Columbia accident, which was caused by a crack on the shuttle's heat shield that led to its disintegration as it returned to Earth in February 2003.
Atlantis was already cleared from damage that could have been caused by debris during lift-off.
Atlantis is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 5:57 am (0957 GMT) on Wednesday.
The five men and one woman crew arrived at the space station on September 11 to install the first addition to the half-finished ISS since November 2002.
The astronauts used the station's Canadian-made robotic arm to attach the 16-tonne truss segment with two solar arrays and spacewalkers set up the system.
Solar arrays
Astronauts Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Joe Tanner conducted the first and third space excursions, while Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean and US counterpart Dan Burbank performed the second spacewalk.
The solar arrays unfurled on Thursday, measure 73 metres and will ultimately provide a quarter of the outpost's power once it is completed.
They will be activated during a Discovery shuttle mission planned for December.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hailed the resumption of the construction work as a success.
"The shuttle mission, although not over yet, is so far just extraordinarily successful in accomplishing the objectives that we set up to undertake on the flight," flight director Phil Engelauf said at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
NASA plans 15 more flights to complete construction of the ISS by 2010, when the three-shuttle fleet is to be retired.
Japan's Kibo experiment module and the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory will be brought up in future missions.