British billionaire Sir Richard Branson is hoping to set a can-do example for "struggling entrepreneurs facing setbacks" by purchasing Pluto, his Virgin company has today announced.
Branson's Virgin Galactic company will bulk up Pluto with a special deep space vehicle that "has a special harness to collect asteroids and space debris, which it will drag into Pluto's gravitational field, increasing the planet's mass," Virgin rocket scientist Professor Chelovek Protaprilia says.
The mission will depart one year from today and take five years to complete.
Branson wants to increase Pluto's mass so the celestial body can be classified as a proper planet, alleviating it of its title as a the second most massive known dwarf planet. Virgin boasts that if the mission is successful, it will be the first time humans have made a planet.
Branson has purchased Pluto for an undisclosed sum.
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