WATCH LIVE: Trump participates in NORAD Santa Tracker calls

PETERSON SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) — Sometimes kids drop the phone after hearing Santa won’t show up if they’re not asleep. Others who call the NORAD Tracks Santa hotline wonder if Saint Nick will be able to find them.

President Donald Trump is expected to participate in the NORAD Santa Tracker Hotline at 4:30 p.m. EST. Watch the live stream in our video player above.

Adults who also remain loyal to the jovial character who is said to deliver gifts around the world are checking out his journey. For 70 years, this has been the tradition of North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canadian operation charged with monitoring the skies for threats since the Cold War.

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More than 1,000 volunteers will take calls at 1-877-HI-NORAD on Christmas Eve from 4 a.m. to midnight Mountain Standard Time. For the first time this year, Santa seekers can make a call through the program’s website, which organizers say will be easier for people outside North America.

The website allows people to follow Santa’s journey in nine languages, including English and Japanese.

Last year, about 380,000 calls came in to the Christmas-decorated hangar at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs — NORAD’s headquarters.

While Santa does not pose a threat, the same combination of radar, satellites and jets that help NORAD carry out its mission year-round makes it able to track Santa’s progress starting at the International Date Line over the Pacific Ocean, said Col. Kelly Froschauer, a NORAD spokesman.

She said that Rudolph’s nose emits a heat signature similar to a missile that is captured by NORAD satellites.

“Faster than starlight”

Last year, Froshore said one girl became upset after hearing that Santa was on his way to the International Space Station, where two astronauts were stranded.

“Fortunately, by the time the call ended, Santa Claus had moved on to another destination and the child was reassured that Santa was not trapped in space and would arrive at her home later that evening,” Froschauer said.

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A man with special needs named Henry called once every year asking if the jet pilot accompanying Santa across North America could put a note in the plane letting Santa know he was in bed and ready for his arrival, said Michelle Martin, a NORAD employee and Marine Corps veteran.

She explained that Santa travels “faster than starlight.”

“I don’t know that our pilot can catch him fast enough. He just waves and takes off,” she recalled saying.

A tradition that started by mistake

The tradition began in 1955 when the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD’s predecessor, was searching for any sign of a possible nuclear attack from the then-Soviet Union. NORAD says a child accidentally called the combat operations center and asked to speak to Santa Claus. The commander on duty, Air Force Colonel Harry Shoop, didn’t want to disappoint the child, so he ordered employees to start tracking Santa and taking calls from children.

The story goes that the first phone call was either the result of a typo or a mistake in calling a number listed in a Sears ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper encouraging children to call Santa.

The legend evolved into the first call to go to a dedicated hotline linking the command to a general in the event of an attack. In 2015, The Atlantic questioned the influx of calls to the confidential line, saying that calling a public phone line was more likely, and suggesting that Shoup had a flair for public relations.

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In a 1999 interview with The Associated Press, Shoop remembers playing along once he found out what was happening, telling the first caller, “Ho, ho, ho, I’m Santa.”

“The crew was looking at me like I lost it,” he recalls.

He said he told his employees what happened and asked them to cooperate with him as well.

It’s not clear what day the first call came, but by December 23 of that first year, the Associated Press reported that CONAD was tracking Santa.

CONAD soon became the North American Aerospace Defense Command. She was working inside nearby Cheyenne Mountain. A network of tunnels is blasted from the mountain’s solid granite so that NORAD officers can survive a nuclear attack.