"NASA has scrubbed the launch for 24 hours," a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administeration said early yesterday.

One of the three fuel cells providing electricity to the shuttle did not function well, another NASA official said.

The Atlantis' launch on the first International Space Station construction mission since in nearly four years had been scheduled for 12:29am (1629 GMT).

Earlier Wednesday, the fueling of the shuttle's external tank had been delayed for two hours at least when a technical glitch was detected. It takes three hours to fill the tank with almost two million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

Foul weather last week scuttled three attempts to launch Atlantis on its 11-day mission to the ISS.