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Thirty-five years after watching the space shuttle Challenger burst into flames moments after takeoff, killing her husband and six other crew members on board, June Scobee Rodgers continues to find ways to honor their legacy — and their mission.

Rodgers is the widow of Dick Scobee, the commander of that fated flight, who died along with the rest of the Challenger crew when the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after takeoff on Jan. 28, 1986, as Rodgers and their two children, along with the rest of the crew's families, looked on from the Florida shore. Today she is 78 years old and a great-grandmother, living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her second husband, retired Lt. Gen. Don Rodgers.

Yet her life is still very much tethered to that tragic moment, and, in a way, she has absorbed the Challenger's unfinished mission as her own.

"The media froze our grief in newspapers and TV clips," Rodgers told TODAY. "It was so unbearable."

Throughout the years, multiple books, documentaries and TV specials have been devoted to the Challenger disaster, including a recent Netflix docuseries, "Challenger: The Final Flight," which examined the mechanical failures and behind-the-scenes decisions that led to the destruction. Rodgers called the series "the most thorough" retelling of what happened.