At 9:30 GMT last Tuesday, the "NORAD Santa.Org" website announced: "Santa Claus just took off from the North Pole."

The unconventional traveler was heading to Chile in the far south of the American continent, in one of the nine Santa Claus carriage trips that were filled with gifts, after he distributed 4.3 billion gifts in Oceania and Asia, then Europe and Africa.

For decades, the US military has been following the Santa Claus tour on December 24, and for the first time this year it has received support from astronauts on the International Space Station to verify that gifts are distributed without hassle.

"We got visual confirmation yesterday that Santa Claus is currently over India," said American astronaut Andrew Morgan in a video clip of the station.

The Air Security Command in the United States and Canada (NORAD) explained that the station, located at an altitude of 400 km above Earth, provides astronauts with "an ideal observation center to follow the Santa Claus tour around the world", thanking Colonel Morgan and his team for this unprecedented cooperation.

The information gathered jointly provides a direct and three-dimensional picture of the Santa Claus trip through the "NORAD Santa.Org" website which is visited by more than 20 million people annually on the occasion of Christmas.

The US Department of Agriculture, for its part, said in a statement that it allowed Santa Claus reindeer to enter US soil after it had verified that it had obtained all the necessary vaccinations.