Space debris is a natural consequence of space exploration, but the International Space Station (ISS) may soon have a remedy for the potentially harmful junk floating around in low-orbit.

According to Space.com, a group of scientists believe a telescope to be added to Japan's section of the ISS could also be used to detect and destroy potentially harmful space debris. The Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO) is scheduled for installation in 2017 and could be outfitted with an in-development laser.

Rikagaku Kenkyūsho (RIKEN) Computational Astrophysics Laboratory in Wako, Japan initially did not have this envisioned for the EUSO.

"The EUSO telescope, which was originally designed to detect cosmic rays, could also be put to use for this useful project," Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, an astrophysicist and chief scientist at the RIKEN, told Space.com.

Ebisuzaki led a study, published in the journal Acta Astronautica, on the possibility of a laser being attached to the EUSO.

"We realized, that we could put it to another use. During twilight, thanks to EUSO's wide field of view and powerful optics, we could adapt it to the new mission of detecting high-velocity debris in orbit near the ISS," he said in a press release. "If that goes well, we plan to install a full-scale version on the ISS, incorporating a three-meter telescope and a laser with 10,000 fibers, giving it the ability to deorbit debris with a range of approximately 100 kilometers. Looking further to the future, we could create a free-flyer mission and put it into a polar orbit at an altitude near 800 kilometers, where the greatest concentration of debris is found.

"Our proposal is radically different from the more conventional approach that is ground based, and we believe it is a more manageable approach that will be accurate, fast, and cheap. We may finally have a way to stop the headache of rapidly growing space debris that endangers space activities. We believe that this dedicated system could remove most of the centimeter-sized debris within five years of operation."