Santa has officially set off: Follow the big man LIVE

The most important flight of the year is underway

After 364 days of careful preparation and planning, Father Christmas/Santa Clause/Saint Nick is off, zooming across the globe to bring you - yes, you - everything you want for Christmas.

And if you want to know exactly where the big man is over the coming hours, you need to head to the North American Aerospace Defense Command for their annual Santa tracker.

From 11am GMT, the good folk at NORAD will pick up the first signal from Santa's sleigh to start tracking his every move.

This heartwarming tradition has become a beloved part of Christmas for decades, giving kids across the world the chance to see just how far away Father Christmas is.

The origins of NORAD's festive tradition date all the way back to 1955, and were spawned from a lovely mistake when a child accidentally called a military command in Colorado in the hope of speaking to Santa Claus.

What had happened was the youngster had seen an advert in a local paper from a department store but had dialled a misprinted phone number. The man on the phones that Christmas Eve, Air Force Commander Harry Shoup, quickly understood the mix-up and assured the child that he was indeed Santa Claus.

Throughout the night, more calls came in from excited kids, to the extent that Commander Shoup had to assign a duty officer to continue answering the phone.

This spawned a tradition that was later adopted by NORAD when it was established in 1958.

Usually, NORAD focuses on defending and monitoring the skies of North America. But every Christmas, they also field questions from kids about Little Saint Nick and his progress through the Christmas night.

As you'd expect from such a seasoned flier, Santa has never had an accident or crash during his journey.

For anyone interested in what sort of aircraft Father Christmas is piloting, NORAD have the exact specifications to hand.

The sleigh measures 75 candy canes in length, 40 candy canes in width, and 55 candy canes in height. At the start of his delivery run, it weighs the equivalent of 75,000 gumdrops, but by the end of the night, it has gained an extra 5,000 pounds, likely due to ice and snow accumulated while traveling through the wintery night.

As for the gifts themselves, they weigh an astonishing 60,000 tons - no problem for Rudolph and his team though, who have been training all year for this.

The jolly old man himself has an official weight of 260 pounds, but by the time he returns home to Mrs. Claus, his weight has increased by 1,000 pounds, as you would if you'd been enjoying a few million cookies and mince pies during the night.

When asked about the unique characteristics of Santa's sleigh, a NORAD spokesperson told Insider: "We really don't want to compare Santa's sleigh to a C-130, but what we can confirm is that Santa's sleigh is a versatile, all-weather, multi-purpose, vertical short-take-off and landing vehicle.

"It is capable of traveling vast distances without refuelling and is deployed, as far as we know, only on December 24th (and sometimes briefly for a test flight about a month before Christmas)."