Monitors are illuminated in the NORAD Tracks Santa center at Peterson Air Force Base, Monday, Dec. 23, 2019, in Colorado Springs, Colo. More than 1,500 volunteers will answer an estimated 140,000 telephone calls from children and their parents who will be checking on the whereabouts of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) — Depending on which country they're from, the kids may ask about Father Christmas, Papa Noel, Saint Nick or Santa Claus.

But they all want to know one thing: where in the world the jolly old man and his sleigh full of gifts are on Christmas Eve.

For the 64th time, a wildly popular program run by the U.S. and Canadian militaries is providing real-time updates on Santa's progress to millions around the globe.

And this year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is offering even more high-tech ways for children and parents to follow along.

Operation NORAD Tracks Santa has evolved from a misdirected telephone call in 1955, to a trailer parked outside the command's former lair deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, to NORAD 's modern-day headquarters at Colorado's Peterson Air Force Base.

Along the way, the tens of thousands of telephone calls fielded by NORAD volunteers each year have been augmented by an explosion of technology that lets millions track St. Nick's journey from the North Pole to the Pacific and Asia, from Europe to the Americas.

This year's portals include Alexa, OnStar, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and 3-D apps developed for mobile devices by Cesium, a Philadelphia-based IT and defense contractor. The apps integrate geospatial and satellite-positioning technology with high-resolution graphics that display the actual positions of the stars, sun and moon and the shadows they cast at any point in Santa's journey.