As of 24 June 2022, ESA has started releasing a new CryoSat-2 Quaternions Product. This product contains the attitude quaternions in the Geocentric Mean of 2000 Inertial Coordinate Frame for the CryoSat-2 mission. It is obtained starting from the corrected mispointing angles measured by the platform star trackers with regard to the nominal satellite reference frame.

Spacecraft attitude information can be used by the Precise Orbit Determination (POD) community to improve satellite orbit modelling and can serve as a reference to analyse platform deviations from the nominal theoretical orbit. More information on the product can be found in the Algorithm Description and Product Format Specification documents.

The Quaternions Product is generated operationally and is available for each day since July 2010. It is accessible through the CryoSat CalVal FTP server (calval-pds.cryosat.esa.int) under the AUX_PROQUA folder with an approximately 24-hour latency. Accounts will be created for each interested user and should be requested from the CryoSat Mission Geophysicist, Dr. Alessandro Di Bella (alessandro.di.bella@ext.esa.int). 

The CryoSat-2 Quaternions Product complements the existing ESA GNSS & POD portfolio available at the Copernicus POD Hub.