Soyuz 6 was part of a joint October, 1969, mission with Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 that saw the three Soyuz spacecraft in orbit together at the same time, carrying a total of seven cosmonauts. The crew of Georgy Shonin and Valeri Kubasov were meant to take high-quality movie photography of the Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 docking, but the rendezvous systems on all three spacecraft failed.