NASA administrators and international scientists are arriving in Alice Springs to help launch balloons the size of football fields into the stratosphere.

The giant plastic balloons, which can float at altitudes of up to 40 kilometres, hold germanium detectors, rare telescopes that collect data on x-rays and gamma rays.

The telescopes weigh two to three tonnes and cost between $5 million and $10 million.

Over the next week, specialist staff and instruments will travel to Alice Springs to begin preparation for the launches, which will happen next month from Runway 17 at the Alice Springs Airport.

The director of the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre, Ravi Sood, says the telescopes have to be stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius.

He says the instruments are being transported by air to Sydney and then in a special vehicle to Alice Springs.

"These are actually state-of-the-art, extremely sensitive instruments and you would not find anything like that in Australia or in most other countries," he said.

"Launching is a hairy process with such large balloons; they're made of very flimsy material, you're talking about material that's the thickness of glad wrap."

Dr Sood says central Australia has excellent conditions for the experiments.

"Alice Springs is a good place to do that in because here we can look at the centre of our galaxy directly overhead, whereas you can't see the centre of our galaxy from the Northern Hemisphere," he said.

"That's one reason for coming to Alice Springs."

When all the data is collected, the telescopes will be detached from the balloons and parachuted down to land.