Analysis of the Proposed Planetary Radar Reflection Experiment

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Abstract
An analysis is made of an experiment recently proposed by Shapiro as a new test of general relativity theory. This consists in measuring the transit times of radar signals reflected from one of the inner planets. It is found that if the observations are expressed in terms of measurable orbital parameters, as they must be eventually, this experiment has the unexpected property of being sensitive to a nonlinear term in Einstein's theory. Great care must be taken in deciding what is actually measurable, and it is shown that the process of reconciling the results of calculations performed with mathematically different but physically equivalent forms of the metric is of considerable help in making this decision.

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