May 13, 1986

Nearly six months before the Challenger disaster, the space agency was given results of a test showing that safety seals in the space shuttle's booster rockets could fail at temperatures of 50 degrees or lower, according to a newly disclosed document. Ruptures of both the primary and backup seals of the booster rockets have been blamed for the Jan. 28 disaster, which killed the seven astronauts aboard. The Challenger was launched in 36-degree weather, far colder than at any previous shuttle launching. It disintegrated 74 seconds later.

Finance ministers and central bankers continued their tentative campaign to halt the slide of the dollar yesterday, but with no clear sign of success. Traders reported modest intervention by both the Bank of Japan and West Germany's Bundesbank, but the Federal Reserve stayed on the sidelines and the dollar drifted lower during quiet trading. In New York, the dollar opened higher than its Tokyo close of 160.20, but sagged to 160.67 yen. It closed Friday in New York at 162.875. The dollar dropped to 2.1667 German marks, from 2.1872 on Friday.

TAKING on one of technology's greatest challenges, engineers around the world are stepping up efforts to design safer nuclear power generators. And after successful tests last month, some American experts believe they may be close to developing an ''inherently safe'' nuclear reactor. Such a reactor, according to its designers, would shut itself down immediately without human intervention or backup systems in the event of a breakdown similar to what happened at Three Mile Island in 1979 and apparently at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Ukraine. This would presumably make the reactor invulnerable to the most dreaded nuclear accidents involving runaway release of radioactive material and a catastrophic meltdown of the uranium fuel core.

The General Accounting Office told Congress today that Michael K. Deaver ''appears'' to have violated conflict-of-interest laws. The agency sent its findings to the Justice Department for use in considering whether the lobbyist should be prosecuted. The G.A.O., an investigative arm of Congress, conducted a five-month study of Mr. Deaver's role, during and after his service as White House deputy chief of staff, in moving the Reagan Administration toward an agreement on acid rain with Canada. Mr. Deaver, an intimate of President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, left the White House a year ago to form a lobbying business that represents several foreign governments, including Canada's. Congressional investigators and the Justice Department are seeking to determine whether Mr. Deaver violated laws that restrict the lobbying activities of former public officials.

A Federal district judge dismissed thousands of claims yesterday arising from the December 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, ruling that the courts of India, not those of the United States, were the appropriate place for the claims to be heard. However, United States District Judge John F. Keenan, in Manhattan, placed certain conditions on the dismissal of the Bhopal claims. His opinion appeared to be a deft way of sending the litigation back to India - where most of the relevant documents and witnesses are - while in essence threatening to retain jurisdiction unless Union Carbide agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of the Indian courts, to make good any judgment rendered by the Indian courts and to abide by the pretrial procedures for exchanging information that would govern a case in the United States courts. Union Carbide had sought to have the case heard in India, while the Indian Government wanted the case heard in United States courts.