The La Trobe University team will send a helium balloon and equipment 35 kilometres above the earth's surface in a maiden voyage that could pave the way for investigations into a myriad of important phenomena.

Those could include mapping Australia's surface for valuable minerals to measuring the extent of climate change or even searching for extrasolar planets.

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It would be a major step in La Trobe's very own stratospheric space exploration program.

Researchers will release the balloon at Nhill in Western Victoria early in the day and expect it to land hours later somewhere between Bendigo and Shepparton.

They could use later flights to break world records by flying more than 53 kilometres above the earth.

At that height, researchers would be able to measure the electric fields above large thunderstorms and the absorption of greenhouse gases, among other things.

The test flight coincides with science week, when school students are encouraged to consider a career pushing the frontiers of human knowledge forward.

Researchers working on the balloon project hope one day to involve both high schools and La Trobe's own engineering students in flights, especially once it begins launching scientific equipment high into the stratosphere.

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