Solar science from manned suborbital vehicles - the SwRI Solar Instrument Pointing Platform

The SwRI Solar Instrument Pointing Platform (SSIPP) is a protoflight system that leverages the low cost, reusability of suborbital vehicles. SSIPP enables observatory-like solar instrument development at a fraction of the cost and risk of traditional sounding rockets. It also enables solar science at important wavelengths and timescales. SSIPP Mk 1 is being developed to fit the payload space of the XCOR Lynx. It is an electrically self-contained, pilot-in-loop pointing system designed to provide sub-arcsecond pointing to remote sensing solar instruments. SSIPP is wavelength agnostic and includes a standard optical bench for rapid buildup of novel instrumentation. Assembly and testing complete, SSIPP awaits a demonstration test flight in late 2015 or early 2016. This paper will discuss SSIPP's motivation, design, current development, planned test flight, and future expansion of the instrument's technology.