June 18, 1983

The MX missile, the foundation of President Reagan's program to strengthen American strategic nuclear forces, popped out of a towering white canister and arced more than 4,000 miles over the Pacific today on what officials called a successful first flight. ''We feel like we had a magnificent first launch,'' Brig. Gen. Aloysius B. Casey, the program director, said after it was confirmed that half a dozen simulated warheads had landed on target, within 50 miles of Kwajalein Island in the Pacific, 30 minutes after liftoff. ''Everything worked exactly as we expected it to work,'' he said, although he added that it would be several weeks before all of the data from the test are evaluated. Moments after the missile was propelled out of its white cylindrical launcher by clouds of billowing white steam, its firststage rocket ignited with a flash of brilliant yellow flame. Then the missile, which is intended to carry as many as 10 thermonuclear warheads, rose swiftly into a blue evening sky and vanished at the fringes of space.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger reviewed plans today for a flight on which they are to deploy two commercial satellites and, for the first time, release and retrieve a satellite using the shuttle's 50-foot mechanical arm. The complicated retrieval maneuver is to be done by Dr. Sally K. Ride, the first American woman to fly in space. Barring last-minute malfunctions or bad weather, the astronauts were set to begin their orbital journey at 7:33 A.M. Saturday. Landing in Florida Planned The planned six-day mission, the nation's seventh shuttle flight, is also to include the operation of more than a score of scientific experiments.

More than a million Poles gathered at a soccer stadium to hear Pope John Paul II celebrate mass this evening, and when he was done the crowd saluted him with a forest of upraised arms, hands in the V-for-victory sign, and a thundering chant of the name of the founder of the outlawed Solidarity union, Lech Walesa. The huge gathering was filled with red and white banners of Solidarity, the very display of which is an illegal act here. It was another indication that the Pope's trip to his homeland turned into a political event the moment he landed. The streets of central Warsaw were almost totally deserted by early evening as the capital turned its attention to the Pope's mass.

Pope John Paul II urged Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski today to allow Poland the ''renewal'' worked out in August 1980. The Polish leader responded by defending the imposition of martial law, which ended the country's brief experiment. After an exchange of formal speeches and 2 hours and 20 minutes of private talks between the Pope and General Jaruzelski, the Government agreed to let Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity union, meet with John Paul during his weeklong visit. Solidarity, the first independent union in the Soviet bloc, was founded in August 1980. The movement flourished under the process known here as ''renewal'' until the Polish Government imposed martial law on Dec. 13, 1981.

An agreement on a bill that would permit two tenants who are not related to share rental housing was announced yesterday by members of both houses of the New York State Legislature, the State Attorney General and the New York Civil Liberties Union. The measure was introduced in the Assembly yesterday and will be proposed in the State Senate early next week. It specifies that tenants named on leases may share their dwellings not only with their families but also with one additional person and that person's dependent children. The bill, the Occupancy Protection Act, also says that at least one of the tenants covered by the original lease must remain in the apartment; otherwise, the added roommate must renegotiate the lease.