The introduction of "error coordinates" and a "tracking potential" on the rotations affords a global nonlinear version of inverse dynamics for attitude tracking. The resulting algorithm produces "almost global" asymptotically exact tracking: this convergence behavior is as strong as the topology of the phase space can allow. A new family of strict global Lyapunov functions for mechanical systems is applied to achieve an adaptive version of the inverse dynamics algorithm in the case that the inertial parameters of the rigid body are not known a priori. The resulting closed loop adaptive system is shown to be stable, and the rigid body phase errors are shown to converge to the limit trajectories of the non-adaptive algorithm.