"Today's planned launch of an Atlas V carrying NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has been delayed for at least one more day," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement on its website.

"The Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, (which) operates the spacecraft and is managing the mission, experienced a power outage early this morning that has not yet been resolved," the statement said.

"The launch is scrubbed for 24 hours," it said.

The ambitious mission to the outer reaches of the solar system was already cancelled on Tuesday because high winds at the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida put the liftoff at risk.

The New Horizons mission endeavors to propel a grand-piano-sized spacecraft, packed with scientific instruments, to Pluto, the outermost of the nine official planets of the solar system.

Flying at unparalleled speeds of up to 75,000 kilometers (47,000 miles) per hour, it will take the craft 10 years to reach Pluto.

But if NASA does not succeed in launching the probe by January 27, the trip will take several more years.

NASA is trying to take advantage of a timely alignment that puts Pluto, which has a uniquely inclined and non-circular 248-year orbit of the sun, in a position that would allow the space agency to tap into the gravitational force of Jupiter to sling the spacecraft outward at accelerated speeds.

That would help cut about 30 months off the trip to Pluto, which the craft would approach between July 2015 and July 2017.

Travelling at the speed of light, it will take radio transmissions of data from the spacecraft about four hours and 25 minutes to reach Earth in 2015.

Scientists say the mission must be carried out before 2020 because, after that date, Pluto will be too far from the sun and its atmosphere will be frozen.

Mysterious Pluto is the only known planet of the solar system that has not been explored by a planetary probe. It remains enigmatic 75 years after its discovery.

"What we know about Pluto today could fit on the back of a postage stamp," said Colleen Hartman, NASA deputy associate administrator.

The craft will explore Pluto and its large moon Charon and, continuing on a trajectory away from the sun, will then spend five more years probing the icy and rocky bodies of the Kuiper Belt.

Scientists hope the ambitious journey will deliver new views and insights into our solar system, allowing them to better understand the origins of Earth and the other planets some 4.5 billion years ago.

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