POINTS: A Stringent Test of General Relativity

Abstract

We present the results of several numerically simulated missions of an orbiting astrometric dual optical interferometer (Reasenberg, in this Digest). The second-order relativistic light deflection, that is, the part associated with terms in the metric proportional to the second power of the solar potential, has been shown to be about 10 microarcseconds (μas) for a Sun-grazing ray (Epstein and Shapiro [1980], Fischbach and Freeman [1980], Richter and Matzner [1982]). Thus, the 5-μas nominal measurement accuracy of POINTS would bring us to the threshold of a new kind of test of general relativity.