Non-Subscriber Extract
NORAD on hand to safeguard Santa's mission
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| 21 December 2001 |
In
a world whose nations can never lower their guard against hostile missile
or air attack, it's easy to see how a jolly sleigh driver and nine reindeer
- rocketing through international airspace without a filed flight plan -
could easily be riding into danger. There is, however, no reason to worry,
because for the last 46 years the North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD) and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD),
have been on hand to guarantee Santa's safety and track his progress throughout
Christmas Eve.The Santa-tracking operations began back in 1955, when the telephone number for a Santa hotline, misprinted in a Sears Roebuck ad, put a number of kids eager to talk to the man in red through to a hotline of a different sort: that of CONAD's commander-in-chief of operations.
Today, the operation is run by a team of volunteers from Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base, who, supported by donations, hosted an estimated 100 million visits last year.
How does NORAD track Santa?
Santa doesn't tell either Transport Canada or the Federal Aviation Administration where he plans to fly (it varies each Christmas), so NORAD must identify all 'unknown' Christmas objects on the radar screen. They do this in two ways.
Firstly, about 22,300 miles above the Earth a ring of satellites look out for the kind of infra-red heat given-off by a missile, rocket or jet aircraft. This satellite 'Defense Support Program' is backed-up by ground-based sensors that do the rest of the work by accurately tracking any contacts potentially threatening North America. It's this dual system that NORAD uses to track Santa, explaining on its website that "the glow from Rudolph's nose is so bright that it can, in fact, be detected by the infra-red satellite system."
To confirm visual identification, two Canadian CF-18 jets - replete with scanners and digital camera technology - are deployed in the far North of Canada to verify that the objects being tracking are, in fact, Santa, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph. NORAD notes that "the pilots are still surprised to this day to see a smiling, jolly little man in red waving to them from an open sleigh in the middle of a snow storm."
The NORAD Santa site
You can track Santa's progress throughout Christmas Eve at the NORAD website, http://www.noradsanta.org/. If you visit the site before then, however, you can read about the activities of Santa and NORAD on Christmas Eve as well as listen to festive music provided by The USAF Band of the Rockies and the Royal Canadian Artillery Band.
Finally, from all of us working on the website, Season's Greetings from janes.com and have a happy, safe and prosperous New Year.