China's first space station is reportedly free-wheeling around the Earth and could potentially make a lethal return to the ground, space experts have warned.

China's Tiangong-1 satellite allegedly lost radio connection with space authorities in March leaving them with no control over it. Experts fear that the uncontrollable satellite has a deteriorating orbit and could fall back to Earth soon.

Like Us on Facebook

"If I am right, China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their station," Thomas Dorman, a satellite tracker who has been continuously monitoring the spacecraft's progress, told Space.com. "It could be a real bad day if pieces of this came down in a populated area... but odds are, it will land in the ocean or in an unpopulated area."

China's state news agency Xinhua confirmed that the laboratory is indeed dead in space but made clear that it was being monitored.

Xinhua told The Times that "after an operational orbit of 1,630 days, China's first space lab Tiangong-1 terminated its data service. The flight orbit of the space lab, which will descend gradually in the coming months, is under continued and close monitoring."

Tiangong-1, also known as the "Heavenly Palace," is thought to be just one of the about 20,000 space junks orbiting around the Earth at a low altitude.  It was launched in September 2011 to serve as a manned space laboratory.

After the last manned mission was completed in June 2013, the satellite was switched to sleep mode. However, reports indicate that in March, all of the space lab's telemetry failed, and since then, China's space agency has kept mum about the issue.

Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Asia Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, suggested that China's silence over the situation could mean the satellite is already in freefall.

"That would seem to suggest that it's not being deorbited under control. That's the implication,"  he said.

Tagsspace station, Space Lab, Tiangong-1