WASHINGTON -- Researchers are drafting plans for a fleet of spacecraft to capture the most detailed images yet of mysterious black holes.

These stealthy objects -- collapsed stars so dense that not even light can escape their gravity -- have been seen only indirectly, by the destruction they have wrought in gobbling gas and dust from nearby stars.

Now researchers believe they have a way to study the maws of these galactic cannibals by using a circular constellation of spacecraft designed to peer into the depths of black holes. Their papers outlining the mission are to be published later this summer in scientific journals.

Called the Micro-Arcsecond X-ray Imaging Mission or MAXIM, the program would study the X-rays that shoot out from the swirling matter or "accretion disk" that falls into a black hole. Researchers hope to launch the mission in 2025, with costs estimated in the billion-dollar range.

If approved, the mission would be the first to return high-resolution images of a black hole's "event horizon," the wispy boundary between the core and the spiraling zone from which matter is pulled into the hole.

"Everyone, including the public, is fascinated by black holes," said Alan Bunner, head of NASAs program to study the structure and evolution of the universe. "[These are] truly weird places where time stops."

MAXIM would help scientists use the universe "as a laboratory to go after the extremes in nature that we could never do on Earth," Bunner said. "This is really whiz-bang technology."

Scientists have been researching black holes for three decades but they still don't have a clear idea how those objects work. While spacecraft like the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory have seen radiation streaming from black holes, they cannot see well enough to study their inner region.

"To date, all evidence for black holes is based on observing matter that is falling into the hole or orbiting a hole," said Bill Hiscock, a professor of theoretical physics at Montana State University.

As its planners envision, MAXIM would have nearly 10 million times the resolution of instruments on Hubble or Chandra. That's enough to give scientists their first clear views of black holes.

For astrophysicists, the new images could provide a better understanding of how gravity works under conditions a billion times more extreme than anything found on Earth.

"Any kid who's watched his ice cream fall on the street knows [gravity] is there," Bunner said, but scientists still have much to learn about the fundamental forces behind gravity.

"I started studying black holes in the 1970s when they were first discovered. To obtain a direct image of the event horizon would be the ultimate goal for me."

Under review at NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), the MAXIM mission is a "long-term goal that is very difficult but achievable," said Nick White, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

While "the payoff is always hard to predict," he said, a better understanding of the gravitational forces behind black holes "may lead to new technological advances that we cannot start to comprehend."

Getting a good look at these faint and distant objects will require a leap in technology. A single telescope in space would be impractical. Its mirror would need to be about the size of a football field -- too big and too heavy for any rocket to carry.

Instead, MAXIM would use 32 small telescopes spaced evenly around the perimeter of a circle 328 feet to 3,280 feet (100 to 1,000 meters) in diameter. From there they would collect X-ray beams and funnel them to a larger telescope positioned at the hub. That central telescope then would relay the data to Earth.

The entire constellation would orbit the sun from a point several million miles from Earth.

NASA plans to launch a precursor mission called MAXIM Pathfinder in 2015. It will have two spacecraft that together can capture X-ray images 1,000 times better than what are now available.

More importantly, MAXIM Pathfinder will tell scientists where the best views are for MAXIM.

"We can pace the technology along the way and make sure that were going in the right direction," White said. "The last thing we want to do is build the [MAXIM] imager and then see that theres a fog in the way."

MAXIM represents the culmination of years of research for its project scientists.

"I started studying black holes in the 1970s when they were first discovered," White said. "To obtain a direct image of the event horizon would be the ultimate goal for me."

MAXIM had plenty of skeptics at first because scientists did not believe that X-rays from black holes were bright enough to be seen.

"When we started this nobody had any respect for it," researcher Webster Cash of the University of Colorado told scientists at a NIAC meeting in June.

Cash, who has been working on MAXIM for two years, however was able to demonstrate that even faint X-ray sources contain enough photons to register on the spacecraft's detectors.

He's optimistic support will grow enough to take MAXIM from concept to reality.

"If we get this on the road map now, weve got a decent chance of getting it on its way," Cash said.