What was going on when I was born?

Five astronauts rode the space shuttle Challenger into orbit today and deployed a communication satellite that later appeared to be lost in space. The satellite, owned by Western Union Corporation, was reported late tonight to be out of contact with the shuttle or any ground tracking stations. The North American Aerospace Command at Colorado Springs was searching the skies for the satellite. It was not clear whether the satellite's rocket ever fired to boost it toward its higher orbit.

Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have agreed to remove much of the anti-Administration language in a draft resolution calling for the early removal of the marines from Lebanon, but the document will still call for their ''prompt and orderly withdrawal,'' Congressional staff members said today. The staff members said the Democratic committee members also planned to add provisions to the resolution that are critical of Syria and the Soviet Union. President Reagan, speaking of the Democrats' call for an early withdrawal with or without any kind of political accord in Lebanon, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal today that the Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., ''may be ready to surrender, but I'm not.'' Solarz Urged a Revised Draft The agreement to rewrite the original draft resolution, which was sharply critical of the Administration's policy, came Thursday night at the urging of Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of Brooklyn, at a caucus of the committee's Democrats, aides said.

Four days before the start of the Olympic Winter Games, a bitter dispute is under way over the use of the Olympic flame for the Summer Games in Los Angeles. Nicolas Nissiotis, one of two Greek members of the International Olympic Committee, urged the body today to revoke its approval of a plan under which the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee would sell stretches of the route on which the Olympic flame will be carried next summer from Greece to Los Angeles. Greek officials in Sarajevo for the start of the Winter Games have voiced emotional opposition to the plan, objecting to what they contend is an unnecessary commercialization of the torch. They indicated that the issue could spill into the political arena, affecting already strained relations between the United States and Greece.

The national unemployment rate declined in January to 7.9 percent of the labor force, the Labor Department reported today. The drop of one-fifth of a percentage point continued a five-month trend that has brought the jobless rate to the lowest point since October 1981. The department also reported that two different measures of the number of people working showed gains. The figures seemed to suggest that the economic upswing had carried over into the new year, as most analysts had expected.

The Pentagon, ending weeks of speculation, announced today that it would split a contract to build advanced jet engines for the Air Force's F-15 and F-16 fighters between two rivals. The Air Force said it would award 75 percent of the first year's production to the General Electric Company and the remaining 25 percent to the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Group of the United Technologies Corporation, the current supplier of engines for the two Air Force planes. A split contract award had been widely anticipated in industry and Government circles in recent weeks, but the one-year term of the contract caught many analysts by surprise. Many wondered whether the term reflected strong 11th-hour lobbying by Pratt, which has enlisted powerful support in Congress to try to thwart the award to G.E. The Air Force said the one-year contract would be for 120 G.E. F-110 engines for use in the F-16 and 40 Pratt & Whitney F-100 engines for use in 20 of the twin-engine F-15's. The value of the contracts was not disclosed.

President Reagan proposed a five-year, $8 billion program of aid to Central America today. It included $312 million in military aid to El Salvador over the next two years. ''If we don't help now, we'll surely pay dearly in the future,'' the President declared in offering the aid request, which was patterned on the findings of his commission on Central America. One major departure, in the view of critics in Congress, was an insistence by the Administration that the President ''control the spigot'' of new aid, as one high-ranking official put it at the White House, and that Congress not impose an automatic cutoff of assistance if death-squad abuses are not controlled in El Salvador.

Experts differ on the degree of hazard posed by the banned pesticide and those replacing it. Page 9. WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency today ordered the immediate suspension of any use of the widely used pesticide EDB on grain products, but said the nation was not facing ''a public health emergency.'' William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the agency, also announced the agency's determination of maximum safe levels for residues of the pesticide in grain and foods that are already contaminated. The pesticide is known to be a potent cancer-causing agent in animals.

The dispute within the Reagan Administration over budget deficits erupted before Congress today when an infuriated Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan told senators that they could ''throw away'' Martin S. Feldstein's Economic Report of the President. Mr. Regan was testifying this morning before the Senate Budget Committee on the President's budget proposal for the 1985 fiscal year when the ranking Democrat on the committee, Lawton Chiles of Florida, cited passages on budget deficits appearing in the Economic Report, which was sent to Congress on Thursday. The Secretary said that the only part of the 343-page document that reflected Administration views was the President's eight- page opening statement. Rest Written by Council The rest of the report was written by the three-member Council of Economic Advisers, under the chairmanship of Mr. Feldstein.

The Government said today that it was sending more troops into the southwestern province of Matabeleland and imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in certain areas. The Home Affairs Minister, Simba Mubako, declined to say at news conference whether the announcement marked a new military drive against rebels in the province. ''Troops will be increased to whatever level is considered necessary to deal with increased infiltration,'' Mr. Mubako said.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL Committee on Nongovernmental Organizations - 10:30 A.M. and 3 P.M.

At precisely 8:20 this evening, almost 1,000 men, clad in a zany assortment of costumes, let out a great cheer and threw burning torches into a Viking longship that some of them had lovingly built over 15 weeks. Flames leaped 40 feet into the cold, dank winter air of the Shetland Islands, consuming the splendidly crafted boat in a matter of minutes while the men sang ''The Norsemen's Home,'' a hymn celebrating ''the noble, hardy, northern men who ruled the stormy wave'' centuries ago. And then, the pagan ritual over, the annual jamboree of dancing and drinking began - the all-night party that the people of this windswept archipelago wait for and plan for all year long. The festival, known as Up-Helly-Aa, has been taking place since 1881. The name means ''end of the holy days,'' and the festival recreates the wild celebrations in which the stout Vikings who first settled the Shetlands used to indulge at the end of the Christmas season. It heralds the approach of spring, and with it the end of the long, dark winter nights here in the most northerly part of Britain.

The Soviet Union has promulgated a new law providing prison terms for anyone passing economic, scientific, technical or other ''official'' secrets to foreigners. The measure, which was published in the Gazette of the Supreme Soviet and which went into effect Wednesday, was added to existing laws against passing military or state secrets. Western diplomats here said the newness of the measure made it difficult to assess the impact or breadth of the new law. But the Russian word for ''official'' used in describing information that could not be passed, ''sluzhebnaya,'' generally refers to anything associated with one's work and could encompass much of the information that a Soviet citizen might come across in his or her work.