Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing 140 km southeast of Dzheskasgan.

Igor Volk was a test pilot, and was planned to be the commander of the first Buran spaceflight. The rule introduced following the Soyuz 25 failure, insisted that all Soviet spaceflight must have at least one crew member who has been to space before. As a result, it was decided that Igor Volk should have spaceflight experience, and he was originally scheduled to visit Salyut 7 in 1983. But following the failure of Soyuz T-8 to dock to Salyut 7, in April 1983, the Soyuz launch schedule was disrupted, and Igor Volk's original crew members, Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Soloviyov, were rescheduled elsewhere. They later became long-duration crew members of the third resident crew, and Igor Volk was scheduled fly in the passenger seat of a visiting mission Soyuz T-12 to the third resident crew, but the other members of the Soyuz T-12 mission were not yet decided upon.

Following a one day solo flight Soyuz T-12 docked with Salyut 7 on July 18, 1984 and common work with the third resident crew was done. An EVA by Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Svetlana Savitskaya was performed on July 25, 1984 (3h 35m). Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman ever to perform an EVA. During the EVA they tested the URI multipurpose tool. They cut, welded, soldered, and coated metal samples.

The common work with the third resident crew crew included rezonans tests and collecting station air samples.