Follow Along as NORAD Tracks Santa with Cesium
Cesium has partnered with NORAD since 2012 to provide updates on Santa Claus’s real-time location in 3D on Christmas Eve. Millions of children and their grownups tune in via the CesiumJS-powered app each December 24.
Santa’s previous journeys have taken him over New Zealand on the way to the International Space Station.
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), based in Colorado, USA, defends North America by tracking objects flying in and around its airspace. NORAD tracks Santa one night a year, while providing warnings and defense year round. The NORAD Tracks Santa program was born in the 1950s from a call from a child meant for a department store—but who would know better than NORAD about where the flying Kris Kringle is? This is the program’s 69th year.
All curious Santa-trackers with an internet connection can follow the jolly old elf’s progress online on December 24. Continuous location information from NORAD sensors, an accurate virtual globe, a 3D model of Santa’s sleigh, the star map, and special effects like snow bring this dynamic data to life, visualized in CesiumJS.
Cesium founder/Bentley Systems Chief Platform Officer Patrick Cozzi highlighted the NORAD Tracks Santa program during Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure conference in October 2024.
Savvy readers might be wondering how NORAD tracks someone who moves faster than starlight and how Cesium visualizes those rapidly changing locations at any given time. You can geek out with us over the computer graphics and geospatial tech behind the app in this post.
We’re happy to volunteer our time to continue this festive work in a serious way. Track The Big Guy and your favorite reindeer all day on December 24.