Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing 70 km north of Karaganda.

Main objectives of this flight were a complex testing of all spacecraft systems, which was necessary after the Soyuz 1 accident and again a docking maneuver with an unmanned spacecraft (Soyuz 2). The closest distance of both spacecrafts in space was about 180 m, when Georgi Beregovoy turned over from automatic docking system to a manual docking. Unfortunately, while he was able to close the gap to only one meter, three following attempts to dock failed. Eventually, almost all of the maneuvering fuel was expended and the objective had to be abandoned. Telemetry analysis has shown Soyuz 3 used 30 kg of propellant during 20 minutes of maneuvering in the automatic regime during docking, followed by 40 kg consumed in two minutes of manual maneuvering. Essentially Georgi Beregovoy was trying to dock the spacecraft upside down. This was either due to incorrect configuration of the running lights or cosmonaut error. Soyuz 2 had two continuously illuminated lights on its upper side and two blinking lights on the lower side. Evidently Georgi Beregovoy didn't identify these correctly in weightlessness. Later on, the failure was blamed on Georgi Beregovoys piloting.

Georgi Beregovoy stayed several more days in space and performed complex testing of the spaceship systems. Some systems failed. TV broadcasting was also performed.

The landing was only 10 km far from the target point.