Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing 87 km northeast of Arkalyk.

This mission was the first joint U.S.–Soviet space flight, and the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft. Its primary purpose was as a symbol of the policy of détente that the two superpowers were pursuing at the time, and marked the end of the Space Race between them that began in 1957.

The docking with the US Apollo spacecraft ASTP occured on July 17, 1975. The docking time was 52 hours. It was the first docking of two spacecrafts, launched from different nations. The crewmembers rotated between both spacecrafts and perfomed material experiments. The mission included both joint and separate scientific experiments (including an engineered eclipse of the Sun by Apollo to allow Soyuz to take photographs of the solar corona), and provided useful engineering experience for future joint US–Russian space flights.

After the separation a second short-time docking with Soyuz 19 as the active part was done but there were no more crew transfers. After the final separating the crew performed several experiments including solar and earth photography.

The landing was without any problems, only 6 km far from its aim point.