Google and Microsoft launch Santa trackers that let kids explore the globe

In fact, this is the 60th year that our military has used volunteers to report on his progress.

The NORAD Santa Tracker and the Google Santa Tracker have been activated for Christmas 2015, with millions of children around the world looking to track exactly where Santa is on the way to delivering their presents.

While the call center is full of both military members and civilians, following Santa along his journey can only be done by the top military personnel and the very best equipment.

Santa has officially begun his annual trek around 10 a.m. UTC on December 24, which is 5 a.m. Eastern/2 a.m. Pacific, which means you can already track Ol’ Saint Nick across the Earth’s skies. “The satellites detect Rudolph’s bright red nose with no problem”, NORAD noted in its top-secret Santa file. A colonel realized he was getting a bunch of calls from kids asking about Santa, so he made a decision to play along.

If you’re curious about Santa’s whereabouts, never fear – the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has you covered!

He said, “We keep adding stuff every year”.

“We have children that call in from England, from Germany, from Japan, from Canada”, Maj.

Santa started his global flight around 6 a.m. ET Thursday, and made his first stop in the village of Novoye Chaplino in far northeastern Russian Federation.

Today, NORAD relies on volunteers to make the program possible and the team typically handles more than 12,000 e-mails and more than 70,000 telephone calls from more than 200 countries and territories. Instead of Santa, children reached the commander-in-chief’s hotline at CONAD, the U.S. Continental Air Defense Command. The control room is now at Peterson Air Force Base, also in Colorado Springs.

On a day 60 years ago, a local Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) store in Colorado Springs ran a dial Santa ad. Except the number was a misprint.

Col. Harry Shoup, the operations director, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole.

Luckily, Santa is good at keeping in touch with NORAD, Gordinier said.