Tracking Santa
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — There’s only five days left until NORAD begins its annual Christmas Eve tracking of Santa.
The NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center opens at 6 a.m. on Christmas Eve and closes 5 a.m. on Dec. 25 after officials are assured Santa has completed all his deliveries and gifts are waiting for children.
For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s flight.
The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD commander-in-chief’s operations “hotline.”
The director of operations had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.
In 1958, the Canadian and U.S. governments created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which then took on the tradition of tracking Santa.
Since that time, NORAD men, women, family and friends have volunteered their time to personally respond to phone calls and e-mails from children worldwide.
In addition, NORAD now tracks Santa using the Internet via www.noradsanta.org.
Officials also said media from all over the world “rely on NORAD as a trusted source to provide updates on Santa’s journey.”
High tech tracking
To provide those updates, NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa: Radar, satellites, “Santa Cams” and fighter jets.
The radar system consists of 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. Starting Christmas Eve, NORAD will monitor the radar systems continuously for indications that Santa has left the North Pole.
The moment that radar indicates Santa has lifted off, NORAD uses its second detection system. Satellites positioned in geo-synchronous orbit at 22,300 miles from the Earth’s surface are equipped with infrared sensors, which enable them to detect heat and thus Santa’s sleigh and reindeer.
The third tracking system is the “Santa Cam” network, which are high-tech, high-speed digital cameras pre-positioned at many locations around the world. The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey worldwide.
The fourth system is made up of fighter jets. Canadian NORAD fighter pilots flying the CF-18 intercept and welcome Santa to North America. In the U.S., according to officials, American NORAD fighter pilots in the F-15, F-16 or the F-22 “get the thrill of flying alongside Santa and his famous reindeer.”
Once data is collected on Dec. 24, it is then pushed into the Google Maps and Google Earth so that families all over the world can also follow Santa, according to officials.