Soyuz 17 was the first of two long-duration missions to the Soviet Union's Salyut 4 space station in 1975. The flight set a Soviet mission-duration record of 29 days, surpassing the 23-day record set by the ill-fated Soyuz 11 crew aboard Salyut 1 in 1971.

Salyut 4 was launched with cosmonauts Georgi Grechko and Aleksei Gubarev as its first crew, was launched 16 days later on 10 January 1975. Gubarev manually docked Soyuz 17 to the station on 12 January, and upon entering the new station he and Grechko found a note from its builders which said, "Wipe your feet!"

The cosmonauts began powering down the station on 7 February and they returned to Earth in the Soyuz capsule two days later. They safely landed near Tselinograd in a snowstorm with winds of 72 km/h and wore gravity suits to ease the effects of re-adaptation.

This is Soyuz's 30th flight, and 16th crewed flight.

The Soyuz is a Soviet crewed spaceship, developed to made manned lunar missions. This version called 7K will fly 4 times on the giant launcher N1, and several tens of times on Proton to fly over the Moon, which will be successful during the mission Zond 4. Soyuz will become the first spacecraft to transport living beings to the Moon during the flight of Zond 5, with two turtles. Subsequently, it is adapted to low orbit and will fly on the Soyuz launcher to serve the Salyut and Mir stations and the ISS.