Hello there and welcome to another episode of Meet the Press reports, where we do a deep dive and do a single topic each week.

Over 50 years ago, two Americans were the first humans to step foot on the moon. He was in the midst of the international space

race. Yet the press has been there to cover the big moments. President Kennedy a few days ago

laid before Congress his recommendations for a vast forward push in the conquest of outer space.

Back then, it was just NASA. Now there are many new major players in this decades-long game.

Space exploration and travel is becoming a commercial industry. And the new industrial space

ventures are bringing some cutthroat competition, sometimes at the cost of NASA's ongoing scientific missions.

Private companies are now leveraging new technology to do what NASA once exclusively did itself, and they're going to make money while they're at it.

The market is clearly pretty lucrative, and it forces the question.

Has the space race really evolved from the pursuit of national pride

to a bitter battle for plain old market control?

My colleague, NBC News correspondent Jacob Ward, has more on this new space race.

For generations, we've assumed that space was a place reserved for superpowers and for scientists.

In the 1960s, the race to the moon between the Soviet Union and the U.S.

had a clear winner, America.

We sent up a rocket built by public servants and became the only nation to ever set foot on another heavenly body.

The United States went on to explore the solar system with satellites.

We put robots on Mars, all funded by billions in

taxpayer money.

That's on some fun. Coordinated by NASA. And today, the tradition of big, pure scientific

endeavors continues. A satellite built in the U.S., the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor

to Hubble, is about to give scientists all over the world the ability to see through time.

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