President Barack Obama has said that the "North Star" of strengthening the middle class, creating jobs and growing the economy guides him and his budget priorities. Needless to say, we at NASA love that metaphor as it reminds us of how much America's space program has meant to our nation and the world over the past 50 years. From landing the first humans on the moon to helping build the world's strongest aerospace industry, to creating more than 1,800 spinoff inventions that are improving life and saving lives right here on Earth, NASA has played an indispensable role in the progress of America. And as our global village transforms itself into a highly competitive, technology-driven 21st-century community, the business of space is increasingly becoming the business of America.

That fact has not been lost on Congress or the president. Even in these tight budgetary times, support for NASA has remained strong, as evidenced by the bipartisan support we enjoy and the $17.7 billion 2014 budget the president has proposed for the agency. It is a budget that invests in American leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery, supports jobs and America's growing commercial space industry, drives innovation in space and aeronautics technology, and develops new science missions to reveal the unknown and increase our understanding of our home planet.

Last week marked the third anniversary of Obama's visit to Kennedy Space Center where he set a goal of sending humans to an asteroid for the first time in history by 2025 and making a crewed journey to Mars by the 2030s. This budget keeps NASA on track for fulfilling those ambitious goals. It fully funds the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket and Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle needed to carry astronauts to deep space, and it advances game-changing technologies to carry out the first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid.

Capturing and redirecting an asteroid will allow us to accomplish multiple goals. First, it takes advantage of the hard work on our deep-space technologies and will provide valuable experience in mission planning and operations that are needed for future crewed deep-space missions, including our planned visit to Mars. Second, it will allow our astronauts and scientists to collect samples that could yield benefits for life on Earth. And third, it will advance our efforts to prevent an asteroid or other "near-Earth object" from colliding with devastating force into our planet.

Planning and design of this initiative has already begun and will continue into this summer. Leveraging capabilities throughout the agency, we plan to use a high-power solar electric propulsion system, which is being developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, to rendezvous with, capture and redirect a small asteroid into a stable orbit in the lunar vicinity. From there, our astronauts will be able to visit and return samples using the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket.

The events of Feb. 15 were a stark reminder of why NASA has for years devoted so much attention to objects close to Earth. The predicted close approach of a small asteroid and the unpredicted entry and explosion of a very small asteroid about 15 miles above Russia have focused worldwide attention on the necessity of tracking asteroids and other objects and protecting our planet from them. The coincidence of having these two very rare events happening on the same day, along with the unfortunate injuries to more than 1,000 people on the ground in Russia, made this a very big news story.

While the probability of any sizable near-Earth object impacting the planet anytime in the next 100 years is extremely remote, we cannot ignore this potential. The 1908 explosion of an asteroid over a remote part of Siberia devastated 830 square miles and flattened 80 million trees. Untold numbers of people would have been killed if it had struck in a populated city.

NASA currently leads the world in the detection and characterization of near-Earth objects and is responsible for the discovery of about 98 percent of all known objects. We are regularly monitoring the risks to our planet and constantly updating our knowledge.

Seizing and isolating an asteroid not only fulfills our congressionally mandated obligation to "detect, track, catalogue and characterize" near-Earth objects, it will demonstrate our new deep-space technologies, move us closer to our goal of sending humans to Mars and enhance our ability to protect our planet and prevent natural disasters from space. That is a North Star well worth following.

Charles Bolden is the administrator of NASA.