MELBOURNE SHORES, Fla. — One Brevard County family is marking an out-of-this-world find on the beach almost a year after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

"We were in lockdown because it was COVID,” Sherrie Stovall of Melbourne Shores says. “We were right in the middle of all that."

The pandemic was in full swing last year, and Stovall and her two boys, Austin and Dylan, were in the midst of e-learning.

"A friend called and said he found a round cylinder on the beach," she says. "So we took a break from school."

With their curiosity peaking, minutes into their beach walk April 29, they found the mystery item about which her friend had told her.

Not knowing exactly what it was, Stovall made the call to NASA officials at the Kennedy Space Center.

Turns out, the discovery was indeed space-related and a find nearly two decades in the making.

"It was in great shape,” Stovall says. “We didn't realize it has been out as long as it had been. We did think about rolling it home as a playground item, but it was very large and heavy.”

That's an understatement. It was a 46-inch-in-diameter motor from a Delta III launch from August 27, 1998.

Seventy one seconds into that flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the rocket's guidance system failed, sending it off course. The Range Safety Officer sent the command to destroy it.

Parts fell into the Atlantic 10 miles offshore.

NASA officials did come get the booster artifact, which today sits inside Hangar C at the Air Force Space & Missile Museum on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Stovall says the family plans to visit soon to see their old friend's new home, 20 years after it left.

"Now that we know it's there, we would love to," Stovall says.

​The Florida Senate is considering a bill making it illegal for someone to possess parts of space vehicles without notifying police and arranging for the parts' return to the rocket company.