Intern Experience in the Lucy Student Pipeline Accelerator and Competency Enabler (L'SPACE) Program.

In collaboration with the Lucy Mission (NASA's first spacecraft to explore the outer Solar System asteroids known as the Jupiter Trojan Asteroids) Arizona State University (ASU) has designed the Lucy Student Pipeline Accelerator and Competency Enabler (L'SPACE)

Program. This program is designed to engage a diverse population of higher education science and engineering students in rigorous, project-based STEM workforce preparation to enable a highly-qualified talent pool for NASA's workforce needs. Students are recruited nationally, with a particular focus on minority-serving institutions and organizations, to participate in two academies, the Mission Concept Academy and the Proposal Academy. These academies include collaborative training, design challenge opportunities that leverage the relevant and unique opportunities within NASA's Lucy Mission to become better equipped and knowledgeable for future career opportunities. Students who participate in the academics are eligible to then apply for an L'SPACE internship.

During summer 2019 ASU hosted two rounds of L'SPACE interns. The internships last for five weeks and are held in the ASU Tempe campus. In this paper we present first-hand intern experiences and reflections, we also offer some of our lessons learned from the first iterations of the internships.