The commander was Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko (Russia), and the flight engineer was Edward Tsang Lu (USA).

Originally the Soyuz missions to the ISS were all planned to be only taxi mission to deliver a new Soyuz spacecraft as the station's lifeboat every six month with a visiting crew, but not for crew exchange.

Until the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the same was planned for Soyuz TMA-2, a visiting crew consisting of commander Gennady Padalka and ESA-astronaut Pedro Duque were to spend about one week at the station and then return with the previous Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft.

The third seat might have gone to the Chilean Klaus von Storch as a Chilean space agency (Agencia Chilena del Espacio) cosmonaut, but even before the Columbia disaster, it looked like his flight would not happen, and the seat would go to the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov or to deliver freight to the station.

The spacecraft returned to Earth on October 28, with both the "Expedition 7" crew as well as Pedro Duque on board.