China is making steady progress on a proposed mission to bring a piece of Mars back to Earth in the late 2020s.

The project would be a massive undertaking. But the plans appear serious, and if successful, the mission could result in major scientific discoveries and tremendous prestige—especially if NASA's plans for a similar mission don't get off the ground.

China's space capabilities and ambitions have been growing rapidly in recent years. The country successfully launched two small space stations into Earth orbit and visited them with astronauts, while making rapid advances in robotically exploring the Moon.

Now, China is looking to explore the wider solar system, starting with Mars—Huoxing, or literally 'fire star,' in Chinese.

The Plan

The path to a Martian sample return begins in 2020, when China plans to launch an all-in-one orbiter, lander and rover to Mars, using its Long March 5 rocket. The mission goals are vast, and include investigating soil characteristics, searching for water ice, assessing habitability, studying the atmosphere and tracking the weather.

The orbiter will carry a high-resolution camera comparable to that of HiRISE on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, capable of imaging the surface at 50 centimeters per pixel in relatively wide swaths. The lander will tentatively target one of two potential areas, the first being Chryse Planitia near the Viking 1 and Pathfinder landing sites, and the other including Isidis Basin and a section of Utopia Basin up to 30 degrees north.

The orbiter imagery would be used to examine potential landing sites for a future sample return mission. That mission, which would happen sometime in the late 2020s, hasn't been formally approved, but the Chinese space community appears increasingly serious about making it happen. High-ranking space officials and the country's main space contractor, CASC, are openly discussing the mission in public presentations. More significantly, the government's 2016 space white paper released late last year says China will "conduct further studies and key technological research" on bringing back samples from the Red Planet.