how to have multiple "chasers" in a ws2812b strip triggered by pressing the space bar?

Question

I wrote a small python script to have a light travel down a piece of ws2812b led strip that is triggered when I press the spacebar on the keyboard attached to the raspberry pi. The script works well, but I can only press the spacebar once and then have to wait for the light effect to travel down the strip. I'd like a way for every time I press space, it sends another light racing down the strip.

import keyboard #using keyboard module to get key presses
import time #to wait a certain amount of time
import neopixel
import board


# LED strip configuration:
LED_COUNT      = 48             # Number of LED pixels.
LED_PIN        = board.D18      # GPIO pin connected to the pixels (18 uses PWM!)
ORDER          = neopixel.GRB   #or RGB
CHASER_SIZE    = 10


# Create NeoPixel object with appropriate configuration.
strip = neopixel.NeoPixel(
    LED_PIN, LED_COUNT, brightness=1.0, auto_write=False, pixel_order=ORDER
)

#Clear the strip
strip.fill(0)
strip.show()

def chaser(GREEN=255, RED=255, BLUE=255, SPEED=.01):
    for x in range(LED_COUNT+CHASER_SIZE):
        for y in range(CHASER_SIZE):
            if (x>LED_COUNT-1):
    
                #print("X: ", y, " Y: ", y) #debug
                strip[x-CHASER_SIZE]=(0)
            else:
                if (x-y>=0):
                    strip[x-y]=(GREEN/(y+1), RED/(y+1), BLUE/(y+1))
                    strip[x-CHASER_SIZE]=(0)
            
        strip.show()
        time.sleep(SPEED)
        
    return

if __name__ == '__main__':
        
    while True: #loop while running
        if keyboard.is_pressed('esc'): #check if "Esc" was pressed
            print("pressed esc")
            #Clear the strip
            strip.fill(0)
            strip.show()
            exit() #Quit program
        if keyboard.is_pressed('space'):
            chaser()