The 50th anniversary of NASA falls on what would have been President Lyndon Johnson's 100th birthday. Johnson was a champion of space exploration, co-sponsoring legislation that created NASA.

Johnson considered that to be one of the highlights of his senatorial career, and now an exhibit at the LBJ Library, which opened Wednesday, marks that accomplishment.

"President Kennedy made that famous saying, 'to the moon in 10 years' -- then he turned to Johnson and said you do it!" said Betty Sue Flowers, director of the LBJ Library.

On what would have been Johnson's 100th birthday, the LBJ Library opened "To the Moon," an exhibit celebrating America's space program in the 1960s.

LBJ's daughter, Lynda Johnson Robb, was one of the first to see it. She says her father turned his eye to the sky when the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957.

"It's something that was so important to Daddy and I remember as president that Jim Webb, who was the head of NASA, brought lots and lots of photographs that had been taken from space and brought them down to the ranch and we all looked at everything -- it was amazing," said Robb.

Johnson's younger daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, says putting a man on the moon was a dream of her father's, which started with the creation of NASA in 1958.

Watching the NASA programs succeed felt like a family affair.

"In many ways I just refer to the fact that the space center and I had a lot in common, and indeed in many ways we had the same father," said Luci Baines Johnson.

Ellen Ochoa, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center and the first Hispanic woman in space, served as key note speaker for the opening. She reflected on her own career, made possible by the work of President Johnson.

"At his death, President Nixon said few men in our time have better understood the value of space exploration," said Ochoa.

LBJ's work launched us into the final frontier and will soon take us back to the moon.