NASA wants to capture asteroids for closer study. Asteroids! If that doesn’t ignite your inner geek, you may be clinically depressed because that’s just freaking incredible. As spectacular as Hollywood’s visual representation of the awesomeness of space is, nothing can trump actual plans to capture an actual asteroid in real life. Go, NASA!

They are just plans at this stage, however. According to an article posted on Space.com, NASA has just wrapped up its first internal reviews of the many ideas its researchers came up with to execute the ambitious vision. There were apparently over 400 additional proposals submitted by non-agency sources, which were also considered during NASA’s landmark review. Officials from within the space agency said that the most promising of the plans will be developed further.

The “how” aside, the “what” of the plan is to capture a small asteroid that is anything from 7m to 10m long, drag it into a stable orbit near the moon, and then send astronauts up to explore it, a process that could take place around as early as 2021. The aim is to find out more about space rocks and how to mine them, as well as learn more about the universe’s origins from them, and as a side benefit perhaps discover new technologies and strategies for getting astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s, an undertaking President Obama is keen on.

With such an ambitious plan in place, it’s not unfeasible to think that humanity might be mining asteroids for minerals within a generation. Just think of the massive space industry that will spring up around it as entrepreneurs scramble to secure their piece of the space pie, and the civilisation-level advances that will inevitably come from such an endeavour.

If you want to get an idea of the many asteroid-capture options NASA is exploring, watch the video below. How amazingly cool is that?