[Poohbah]

The video shown on Fox looks like the shuttle went sideways, with the port side leading.

Problem: the Fox video was shot with a lens of insufficient focal length to show the Shuttle as anything more than a featureless point; any appearance of the Shuttle going sideways COULD be an artifact of the camera lens iris.

Additionally, I fail to see how increasing drag on the left side relative to the right side would cause the left side to lead into any yaw movement.

[ThinkingMan]

It is my understanding that the pitch and yaw are controlled by computer. I was thinking on the lines of the computer overcompensating for the sudden heating.

It would make more sense if the heating caused a sudden flattening of the port leading edge- it would reduce the drag coefficient and (if I remember correctly) increase lift.

As I stated- just pure speculation on my part- my aerospace experience is limited to the design of model rockets. I will patiently wait for NASA to explain.