Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing 88 km northeast of Arkalyk.

For the first time since 17 years (mission Soyuz 25), the crew was a rookie crew without any spaceflight experience.

Following a two day solo flight the Soyuz docked with the MIR space station on July 03, 1994. Main goal of the mission was the partly exchange of the resident crew. Both cosmonauts and Doctor cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov became the 16th resident crew.

The crew conducted medical experiments (research of problems of weightlessness in long term mission) and experiments in materials science, Earth observation, astrophysics an biotechnology.

Progress M-24 arrived at MIR on August 27, 1994 but ran into problems. The freighter's first automatic docking attempt failed. During the second attempt, on August 30, 1994 Progress M-24 bumped into MIRs forward longitudinal port two to four times at low speed, then drifted away. On September 02, 1994 Yuri Malenchenko took manual control of Progress M-24 using a control panel on MIR. A TV on MIR displayed an image of the station's front port transmitted from cameras on Progress M-24; the same image appeared on screens in the TsUP. In an impressive demonstration of remote piloting, Yuri Malenchenko docked Progress M-24 without additional incident.

Yuri Malenchenko and Talgat Musabayev performed the first EVA on September 09, 1994 (5h 06m). The cosmonauts inspected the docking port struck by Progress M-24-it proved to be undamaged-and mended a thermal blanket torn when Soyuz TM-17 struck the station on January 14, 1994. They also prepared equipment for moving the Kristall solar arrays to Kvant, and affixed test materials to MIRs exterior.

The second and final spacewalk occurred on September 14, 1994 (6h 01m) by the same cosmonauts. They carried out assembly work connected with the ongoing effort to move Kristall's solar arrays to supports on Kvant. Yuri Malenchenko and Talgat Musabayev also inspected the Sofora girder.

There have been many problems during this mission, which finally ended with the first successful manual docking of a Progress supply ship at the station by Yuri Malenchenko.

On November 03, 1994 Talgat Musabayev, Yuri Malenchenko, and Ulf Merbold undocked in Soyuz TM-19 and backed 190 m from MIR. They then activated the Kurs automatic approach system, which successfully redocked the spacecraft. The cosmonauts then transferred back to MIR. The test was related to the difficulties Soyuz-TM 20 and Progress M-24 experienced during their automatic approaches. Final undocking and reentry the following day occurred without incident.