Scientists say a world-first space landing in South Australia's outback should create a spectacular fireball.

Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa was due to re-enter the earth's atmosphere around midnight (AEST) on Sunday.

It will end a seven-year, five billion-kilometre journey to an ancient far-flung asteroid to collect the first ever asteroid material to be brought to Earth, and it will be Australia's first ever space landing.

The car-sized probe became the world's first spacecraft to land on and lift off a celestial body other than the moon after touching down on Itokawa, a "rubble-pile" asteroid 300 million kilometres distant, in September 2005.

Hayabusa's on-board devices showed Itokawa was between "several tens of millions and hundreds of millions" years old, and had broken away from an ancient celestial body formed in the Solar System's most primitive stages.

Lindsay Campbell from the Woomera Test Range says safety precautions will include closing airspace, a section of the Stuart Highway and halting the Ghan Railway.

"We're told by NASA that this should be quite a solid fireball as the spacecraft re-enters," he said.

"After a seven year-mission and several billion kilometres, and considering the trouble the poor little thing has had getting home, this is an absolute amazing feat by the Japanese and by NASA who's helping them to square this thing up and fire it at the right spot on Earth."

He suggests people watching for a fireball look out for the re-entry of the return capsule, followed a few minutes later by the entry and burn-up of the spacecraft itself.

"JAXA and NASA have confirmed that the actual trajectory of the spacecraft is absolutely spot on," he said.

"We've cleared the area underneath where it's coming in so we certainly have full confidence that everything is going to be perfectly safe."

A spokesman for the Defence Department said an initial party would fly out to find the 500 kilogram probe once instruments confirmed it had landed.

Among the first people to see it on its return will be local Aboriginal elders, who will fly out in a helicopter to check it has not damaged any sacred sites.

Hayabusa blasted into space in May 2003 tasked with collecting samples from the asteroid's surface, which it is believed could yield unprecedented information about the evolution of the Universe, and fire them back to Earth in a heat-proof capsule.

But a system to stir up dust malfunctioned and scientists from Japan's space agency are uncertain what, if anything, the sample canister will contain.

Scientists hope the probe will give them information about the formation of asteroids.

The mission has also been a test for new technology which could be used to return other space samples to Earth in the future.

An international team of astronomers has gathered in the outback to witness the spectacular end to Hayabusa's journey as it breaks up and is obliterated on re-entry by atmospheric temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.

Described by NASA scientists as a "man-made meteor", the spacecraft will glow several times brighter than Venus and appear to skygazers as a luminous shooting star as it melts.

The carbon-coated dust capsule, released before Hayabusa hits the atmosphere, will streak down to Earth at a blistering 1.93 kilometres per second.

Once it is 10 kilometres above the ground the pod will shed its heat shield and deploy a parachute and homing beacon to signal its exact landing location in the Woomera rocket-testing range.

The capsule will be retrieved by helicopter, for air-freighting by jet to ground control at Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, where it will be x-rayed, analysed and finally opened by scientists from Japan, Australia and the US.

- ABC/AFP