The Soviet-era craft will be ditched in the ocean on February 27-28 after a controlled descent towards the Earth's atmosphere, Russian space agency chief Yury Koptev told a news conference.

"Between February 27 and 28, Mir will enter the atmosphere (to burn up) and the elements that have not been destroyed will drop into the Pacific Ocean," Koptev said.

"These debris will fall into the Pacific Ocean around 1,500 to 2,000 kilometres off the coast of Australia in an area recognized internationally" as safe for the ditching operation.

He made the announcement following a Russian cabinet meeting to discuss measures to ensure the safe destruction of the 14-year-old space station.

"We have to ensure that the Mir station doesn't fall on someone's head," Koptev said on Wednesday.

However, fuelling such concerns, another senior space official warned Wednesday it was impossible to guarantee that Mir would sink in the Pacific Ocean rather than hit land.

Russia cannot accurately predict how the station and its many components would fall after they pass through the atmosphere, because the lower space and atmosphere conditions shift daily, director of Khrunichev space research center Anatoly Kiselyov said.

"It depends on numerous factors such as solar flares, relative positions of the planets and variations of atmospheric density," Kiselyov was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency.

Those parts of the station's component modules that would not burn up in the atmosphere would fall to Earth, over a swathe some 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) long and 200 kilometres (125 miles) wide, he said.

It is quite possible that steel spherical bottles, parts of large module frames, gyros and rocket engines would hit land, according to Kiselyov.

The planned destruction envisages two Progress cargo space ships lowering the Mir orbit to 80 kilometres (50 miles), causing the space station to enter the dense layers of the atmosphere where most of it will burn up.

The remains of the station will then, in theory, fall in the designated area of the Pacific Ocean.

Mir, uninhabited since two Russian cosmonauts, Sergei Zalyotin and Alexander Kalery, returned to Earth in June after a mission lasting more than two months, is currently on automatic pilot.

"It is possible that the automatic pilot will cease to function. In this case we have a crew who are ready to leave for the station," said Koptev.

The official explained that the decision to scrap the once-prestigious station, which suffered a series of accidents in recent years, had been taken for safety reasons.

"We are at a phase when any part (in the space station) could stop working at any moment," he said.

Russia has found that its commitment to the new International Space Station (ISS) has stretched its budget to breaking point. Unable to support both space projects, it decided to abandon Mir.

Four possible options for scrapping the Soviet-era space project were examined.

Under one scheme, Mir would have been broken up into several sections and brought down one by one to the Earth's atmosphere.

But this plan was rejected as unsafe because too much debris would come hurtling down to Earth.

Another scenario, described as "fantastic" by a Russian space official, would have seen a missile fired at Mir, destroying it in a mid-space explosion, but this was ruled out as it would also create too much debris.

A final option, dismissed on cost grounds, would have been to leave the Mir station in orbit indefinitely.

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