NASA's telescope, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), has detected at least 97 unknown objects in the solar system last year, of which 28 were near-Earth objects, five comets, and 64 asteroids in the Asteroid belt.

At least 10 of the detected objects have also been characterized as "potentially hazardous objects," which are at least 100 meters in diameter and may come within 4.6 million miles from Earth. Such objects, as defined by NASA, are guided by "the gravitational attraction of the planets in our solar system into orbits that allow them to enter Earth's neighborhood."

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Experts estimate that these objects have a chance to hit Earth and cause regional or global devastation within the next century. NASA also believed that at least 90 percent of all NEOs with a diameter of more than one kilometer have been discovered, although these only comprise a small fraction of the NEO population, Sputnik News reported. Most NEO, around 90 percent, are between 100 and 1000 meters in size.

"While no known NEO currently poses a risk of impact with Earth over the next 100 years," Lindley Johnson, Planetary Defense Officer, said. "We've found mostly the larger asteroids, and we have a lot more of the smaller but still potentially hazardous ones to find."

According to Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator of the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NEOWISE helps not only to discover uncharted asteroids and comets but also to provide additional data for existing objects.

"It is also proving to be an invaluable tool in the refining and perfecting of techniques for near-Earth object discovery and characterization by a space-based infrared observatory."

Meanwhile, NEOWISE mission team have also created and published an animation of all the findings made during the previous years, showing over 2.6 million infrared images of the sky captured during the mission's third year. So far, NEOWISE has cataloged at least 693 NEOs.