NASA's NEOWISE Mission Has Detected 29,000 Asteroids in the Last Four Years

NASA's NEOWISE mission uses infrared light in an attempt to help the space agency find and study space rocks throughout the solar system.

Citing NASA, NEOWISE has already detected more than 29,000 asteroids since December 2013. Among those, 788 can also be categorized as near-Earth objects (NEOs).

Not all the space rocks NEOWISE detects are asteroids; many are comets instead.

In this video, NASA shares an animation depicting all the space rocks NEOWISE has discerned between December 13th, 2013 and December 13th, 2017. Each of the different colors represents a different type of space rock.