AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: I’m not allowed to tell you where I am (think of a mountain with a huge control room in it) but I can bring you super exclusive news that, for the first time, astronauts aboard the International Space Station are working closely with NORAD to assist Santa Claus as he makes his epic journey around the world.
Although Breaking Defense knew about it before ANYONE else, we can now publicly confirm that “International Space Station U.S. Army Astronaut Colonel Andrew Morgan spotted Santa and his reindeer flying over India ‘bearing south towards Sri Lanka'” now that NORAD has publicly confirmed it. The first spot occurred around noon today.
As the Chinese know all too well, the space station gives America and its allies “a great vantage point to spot Santa on his annual journey around the world” from its position roughly 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Dozens of America and Canada’s finest space warriors peeled their eyes to assist Santa and help him avoid problems such as Kim Jong Un’s Christmas surprise and any other threat to one of the globe’s most important air and space missions. I even heard that Rudolph’s SAR (synthetic aperture radar) system was upgraded by a small company far from Silicon Valley in a record 24 hours from contract announcement to deployment. But I’m not allowed to go into details…
Meanwhile, C2 experts (seen above) scraped the data from the ISS, school-bus sized satellites bearing obscure NRO patches, submarines throughout the Arctic and radar nets across the globe hoping to clear the most efficient and safest path for Santa and his reindeer.
Supplementary data is provided by Verizon, who recently “expanded its relationship to provide a secure 4G LTE wireless broadband signal to Comet, Dancer and Prancer—a set of dedicated routers with festive code names.” The phone company also provides the toll-free hotline for the NTS (NORAD Tracking Santa) call center.
AGI, the space and data services company, provides much of the software and data for the NTS. The company has disclosed that the Santa tracker “uses the 3D Cesium-based globe to provide the 3D tracking. You’ll get Santa’s latest position as he heads west, starting at the International Date Line. Once the reindeer are ready to take off, NORAD’s ‘Santa Cams,’ which are stationed around the glove, stream videos of Kris Kringle as he passes famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China and even NORAD’s Colorado Springs headquarters.”
Merry Christmas from everyone at Breaking Defense!
