  Ever since E.Cartan in the 1920s enriched the geometric framework of general
relativity (GR) by introducing a {\it torsion} of spacetime, the question arose
whether one could find a measurement technique for detecting the presence of a
torsion field. Mao et al.(2007) claimed that the rotating quartz balls in the
gyroscopes of the Gravity Probe B experiment, falling freely on an orbit around
the Earth, should "feel" the torsion. Similarly, March et al.(2011) argue with
the precession of the Moon and the Mercury and extend later their
considerations to the Lageos satellite.--- A consistent theory of gravity with
torsion emerged during the early 1960's as gauge theory of the Poincar\'e
group. This Poincar\'e gauge theory of gravity incorporates as simplest viable
cases the Einstein-Cartan(-Sciama-Kibble) theory (EC), the teleparallel
equivalent GR|| of GR, and GR itself. So far, PG and, in particular, the
existence of torsion have {\it not} been experimentally confirmed. However, PG
is to be considered as the standard theory of gravity with torsion because of
its very convincing gauge structure.--- Since the early 1970s up to today,
different groups have shown more or less independently that torsion couples
only to the {\it elementary particle spin} and under no circumstances to the
orbital angular momentum of test particles. This is established knowledge and
we reconfirm this conclusion by discussing the energy-momentum law of PG, which
has same form for all versions of PG. Therefore, we conclude that,
unfortunately, the investigations of Mao et al. and March et al. do not yield
any information on torsion.
