What was going on when I was born?

Seven astronauts rocketed into orbit aboard the shuttle Challenger today to devote a week of scientific inquiry to the mysteries of both inner man and outer space. Late this afternoon, five hours after the 2,250-ton spaceplane blasted up through the Florida coastal haze, the astronauts successfully launched one satellite. But 15 minutes later they failed in their attempt to release a second one, a 150-pound Navy communications device. Its antennas apparently became stuck in its launching can. The can eventually was resealed, and the satellite will probably be returned to earth aboard the shuttle, although an attempt to deploy it Tuesday was not ruled out.

A QUIET revolution is going on in psychotherapy. As a result, by far the largest portion of the nation's therapy is now done by nonmedical professionals. Psychiatrists, who are medically trained, find themselves increasingly limited to the most severe mental disorders. ''Because of the plethora of nonmedical therapists, psychiatrists are increasingly being pushed into treating the more severely ill,'' Dr. Melvin Sabshin, medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, said. ''And the competition will continue to become more intense as time goes on.''

The abrupt retirement of the commander of all uniformed officers in the New York City Police Department will be announced today in a continuing shake-up stemming from charges that suspects were tortured at a station house, police officials said yesterday. They said that the retirement of three other officials, all commanders in Queens, where the purported torturing took place, would also be announced. The retirements were said to have been made voluntarily, but at the request of the Police Commissioner, Benjamin Ward. The departure of the Chief of Patrol, Hamilton Robinson, who holds the third-highest rank in the department and is the commander of its 17,000 uniformed officers, carries the shake-up begun by Commissioner Ward last week into the highest echelons of the force.

SINCE the turn of the century, students entering New York State high schools have found themselves face to face with daunting obstacles: the basic building blocks of math. Millions soldiered on, mastering geometry in 9th grade, algebra in 10th grade, and trigonometry in 11th grade. Millions more fell by the wayside, casualties of isosceles triangles, quadratic equations, and sine, cosine and tangent. This year, for the first time since the state's basic geometry textbook was written in 1947, a new math curriculum is being used in New York's high schools. In short order, the curriculum change has caused turmoil in the normally neatly ordered world of high school math.

Israel completed the second phase of its three-stage withdrawal from Lebanon today, pulling out of the southern port city of Tyre, the last major city under Israeli military occupation. As happened in previous pullouts by the Israelis, their departure from the predominantly Shiite Moslem area set off joyous celebrations, particularly in Shiite villages. Seven Shiite villages near the port had been raided by Israeli troops and armor during searches for guerrillas under Israel's ''Iron Fist'' policy, which began after guerrilla raids against the withdrawing troops increased sharply. The guerrilla attacks were frequent, and the region from Tyre to Nabatiye came to be known as the ''arc of resistance'' P.L.O. Guerrillas Blocked Within hours of the Israeli departure today, Shiite militiamen moved to block guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization from returning to three Palestinian refugee camps near Tyre. [Page A13.] The leader of the mainstream Shiite militia known as Amal said the action was intended to prevent a repetition of what happened in Sidon, the port north of Tyre, where Palestinian guerrillas joined Christians in battles against Moslems that began after the Israeli withdrawal. The Christians are in the minority in southern Lebanon, and the Shiites are the predominant religious group.

Because of an editing error in some copies, a front-page article on Thursday about campus protests around the nation misidentified a university. It was the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

President Reagan said today that it was ''morally right'' to visit a German military cemetery, and added that the purpose of his visit next Sunday is to symbolize ''the great reconciliation that has taken place'' between the United States and Germany. On the eve of his departure for Western Europe, Mr. Reagan said he would visit the Bitburg cemetery, where 49 SS soldiers are buried, despite opposition from Congress, Jewish groups and veterans' organizations. ''The final word has been spoken as far as I am concerned,'' he said. ''I think it is morally right to do what I am doing and I am not going to change my mind about that.'' In Bonn, the West German Government denied that its plans for Mr. Reagan's visit would damage German-American relations. [Page A10.] Meeting With Foreign Reporters Mr. Reagan made his comments to reporters from six non-Communist nations that will join the United States in an economic meeting in Bonn this week. White House officials fear the dispute over the cemetery visit may overshadow the meeting, which will bring together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and West Germany.

New York City will refinance virtually all of its federally guaranteed debt next month, bringing to a close a chapter of the municipal fiscal crisis of the 1970's, city officials announced yesterday. Under the plan, $555 million in federally guaranteed debt will be replaced by regular city bonds at lower interest rates and payable over a longer period. The federally backed bonds were issued at a time when the city was unable to sell bonds on its own credit because of its shaky finances. This refinancing, budget officials said, will reduce the city's borrowing costs during the next two years by $200 million, thereby freeing funds for other programs and for what Mayor Koch called a continuation of the ''good news'' of his budgets in recent years. More Hirings Planned The Mayor disclosed the plan yesterday as he presented a preview of his next city budget, including the hiring of 2,000 additional police officers and 432 street cleaners, a modest income-tax cut and a sharp reduction in the size of some public school classes.

A New York City police officer was indicted yesterday in the death of a 20-year-old man whose neck was broken last December when the police tried to subdue him. The indictment of Officer Alexander Forbes on a charge of criminally negligent homicide was announced by District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan. Officer Forbes, 36 years old, is accused of causing the death of Jose Llopis-Perez on Dec. 17 by stepping on his neck for ''two to three minutes.'' The death occurred after six police officers tried to subdue the man outside a restaurant on Dyckman Street in Upper Manhattan.

THE excavation of a mysterious shrine in southern Italy has renewed scholarly interest in a shadowy all-woman cult that was among the oldest and most prestigious of all the religious groups of ancient Rome. Three seasons of digging, under the field direction of John Griffiths Pedley of the University of Michigan, have turned up clues about the secret rites of the goddess known in Latin simply as Bona Dea - the good goddess. Dr. Pedley, a professor of classical archeology who is director of the university's Kelsey Museum of Archeology, said in an interview, ''We are generally getting a much clearer view of what the inside of a sanctuary of Bona Dea was like.'' Strange anatomical models, left by cured or ailing women, have been unearthed, along with quantities of cups thought to have been used for drinking wine. But other scholars on the ancient world voiced varied views about the role and religion of women in antiquity, the spirit in which the cult was practiced and the reasons for its durability.

''It is a very happy day for those of us who recall the grim days of 1975.

TINY quantities of more than 30 rare gases threaten to warm the earth's atmosphere even more rapidly over the next 50 years than carbon dioxide will, according to a study by a team of atmospheric scientists. Their findings reinforce a growing conviction among scientists that the trace gases, many of them industrial byproducts, are playing a leading role in the ''greenhouse effect,'' the warming of the earth as less and less heat is able to escape the atmosphere. The new report, the first to analyze all these gases systematically, predicts that the trace gases will more than double the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the decades to come. ''We're saying that you now have to think of a change that's two or three times bigger than we thought due to CO#2 alone,'' said Ralph J. Cicerone, director of atmospheric chemistry at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where much of the research was done. Recent Government studies of the greenhouse effect have concluded that the earth will see profound climate changes beginning in the next two decades. The warming of the atmosphere is expected to raise the level of the oceans as the icecaps melt, and changes in weather patterns are expected to mean disruptions in agriculture that will cost billions of dollars.