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Fayetteville Man Has Unique Memory of Challenger Accident

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One of Rogers' photographs of the Challenger debris.(WRAL-TV5 News)
FAYETTEVILLE — Most of us remember what we were doing when we heard the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 15 years ago this weekend. A Fayetteville man has his own record of the event.

Four months after the explosion, Larry Rogers and his brother went fishing off the N.C. coast. They saw something floating in the water.

After a careful examination and confirmation fromNASA, Rogers was told that he had a piece of the Challenger.

"It's a very strange feeling when we found it, like the excitement of finding it," he says. "Later, you realized people died here."

The seven people aboard Challenger died when the shuttle exploded just 73 seconds into the flight.

NASA seized Rogers' finding, but not before he took some pictures.

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