The uncrewed SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station with its nose cone open revealing its docking mechanism while approaching the station.

The most expensive flying laboratory soon will moonlight again as a space hotel.

Houston-based start-up Axiom has signed a deal with SpaceX to fly three privately paying space tourists to the International Space Station, the companies announced Thursday. The mission is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2021, Axiom said, and will use a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and a Falcon 9 rocket.

Crew Dragon is a capsule SpaceX has been developing for NASA. The spacecraft is built to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, a capability the U.S. has lacked for nearly a decade. SpaceX plans to launch its first NASA astronauts between April and June.

This mission will last 10 days – with two days of travel and eight days on board the space station – and will include an Axiom "commander" to assist the three customers. Axiom said it will announce the members of the crew at a later date.

And, while tourists have flown to the ISS before, Axiom says this will be "the first-ever fully private" trip to the space station.

"This history-making flight will represent a watershed moment in the march toward universal and routine access to space," Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said in a statement. "This will be just the first of many missions to ISS to be completely crewed and managed by Axiom Space."

Suffredini led the ISS program for NASA for a decade until 2015, shortly after which he co-founded Axiom. The company's website offers private missions to the ISS ranging between 10 days to 180 days, with Axiom providing all the services necessary – from training to management and more. Axiom was also recently selected by NASA to build an addition to the ISS, which would be a large habitat that would attach to the space station for research and more.