Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year

Tesla founder and space entrepreneur Elon Musk has been named Time magazine's person of the year.

The magazine made the announcement on it's Twitter handle on Monday.

In their profile of Musk, TIME magazine wrote 'the richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune.'

They called him a man who tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun. 'He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable, ' the magazine added.

Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal while making the announcement tweeted that few individuals have had more influence than Elon Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too.

Being named the TIME's Person of the Year caps what has been a good year for Musk. He overtook space race rival and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest person this year.

In October his electric car company's valuation soared above a trillion dollars, and throughout the year his company SpaceX has teamed up with US space agency NASA to launch various missions.