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Tourists could soon be able to travel to the International Space Station, after NASA announced that it will open parts of the orbiting space lab to more "commercial activities".

Companies will be able to pay to send "private astronauts" to the ISS for "up to 30 days", with the first mission expected to take place "as early as 2020".

These missions will be privately funded, with each trip expected to cost over $50 million (£40 million), according to CNBC.

NASA will receive $35,000 (£27,500) for each night a private astronaut spends on the ISS, which will help to fund its goal of landing the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024.

As Boeing and SpaceX are already developing capsules to carry humans to the ISS, they will be responsible for handling the space tourists and any services related to them.

(Image: Getty)

Initially, there will be two short-duration private astronaut missions per year, according to NASA.

Tourists will be required to meet NASA's medical standards and the training and certification procedures for ISS crew members.

In addition to private astronaut missions, NASA is inviting companies to conduct new commercial activities aboard the orbiting laboratory.

This could include research companies wanting to conduct experiments in microgravity and film companies wanting to make movies against the backdrop of space.

These companies will be able to use resources on the ISS for commercial purposes - and even make use of NASA astronauts' time and expertise.

(Image: NASA)

"You see, the space agency is looking at probably another 10 years of the ISS being in orbit, and saying, 'Okay, how do we move forward?'" Jeff Manber, the CEO of NanoRacks, which coordinates shipments and experiments on the ISS, told The Verge.

"Let's put our toes in the water on purely commercial projects. Let's begin to allow tourism. And let's begin to have the first commercial platforms supported by NASA.

"And so it’s a very important step forward. This is the beginning of a new chapter."

It's a significant U-turn for NASA, which has previously banned any commercial use of the space station and prohibited astronauts from taking part in for-profit research.

However, the space agency has been under pressure to reduce its costs for operating the station, which currently amount to between $3 billion and $4 billion a year.

In 2018, US President Donald Trump published a budget which called for the station to be defunded by the government by 2025, with operations handed over to private companies.

The White House is no longer pursuing the 2025 deadline, due to pushback from lawmakers, but NASA is still looking to jump-start the private space industry's takeover of low-Earth orbit.

"We're reaching out to the US private sector to see if we can push the economic frontier into space," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for the human exploration and operations mission directorate.