NASA has released its 2014 Strategic Plan, with the space agency’s Office of Strategy Formulation identified as the responsible office.

“Our long-term goal is to send humans to Mars. Over the next two decades, we will develop and demonstrate the technologies and capabilities needed to send humans to explore the red planet and safely return them to Earth,” explains NASA chief, Charles Bolden, in the opening pages of the document.

“One of the steps toward this goal is a proposed mission to find, capture, redirect a near-Earth asteroid safely into the Earth-Moon system, and then send astronauts to explore it. This mission will allow us to further develop new technologies and test mechanisms and techniques for human operations in deep space, as well as help us understand potential future threats to human populations posed by asteroids,” Bolden explains.

For access to the entire document, go to:

http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/npg_img/N_PD_1001_000B_/N_PD_1001_000B_.pdf