Would the space shuttle do a yaw maneuver to avoid the tower?

Question

I read some rockets do a small yaw maneuver of about a degree immediately after T0 to avoid the tower in case of wind gusts.

Would the space shuttle ever do such a maneuver? Did it?

I read also that from T0 through the start of the pitchover maneuver, the attitude indicator will display pitch-yaw-roll in that order relative to an inertial reference frame conveniently located at the launchpad and aligned with the launch azimuth precisely at T0.

Because pitch was the first rotation in the displayed sequence, a yaw maneuver relative to that inertial pad frame would have registered as a combined pitch and yaw rotation sequence and not as a pure yaw rotation. This would have been less than intuitive for the crew, so from this alone I want to say the shuttle never did yaw maneuvers and instead went straight to the roll and pitch rotations.

Does this seem right?

Answer 1

No. The commanded Euler angles in the Boost Reference frame¹ were: pitch 90 degrees, roll and yaw 0 degrees until

the computed relative velocity of the stack exceeded the value stored in a reconfigurable flight software variable called PPOLY(2). The nominal value of PPOLY(2) was 118.45 ft/sec. This was nominally achieved at ~ T + 8 seconds and and altitude of ~376 feet.

Once that computed relative velocity was exceeded, the Single Axis Rotation a.k.a. Roll Program started.

¹The Boost Reference frame is an inertial system frozen in time and space at liftoff and defined as follows:

• The origin is at the launch pad
• The z-axis is directed along the local gravity vector and positive downward.
• The x- and y- axes are contained in the local horizontal plane with positive x directed northward and y completing the right handed triad.

Sources:

• https://space.stackexchange.com/a/36738/6944
• Day of Launch Trajectory Basics (not online)
• First Stage Nominal Ascent Trajectory (ditto)