Space shuttle computer, date glitch

The space shuttle Discovery is due to launch on December 7 on mission STS-116,

STS-116 Mission Patch

You can download a 7.3MB Press kit here, which describes the mission in detail and contains training pictures, here's a brief description of the mission taken from that document:

Space Shuttle Discovery launches in December on its 33rd mission to deliver another truss segment of the International Space Station and begin the intricate process of reconfiguring and redistributing the power generated by two pairs of U.S. solar arrays.

The shuttle launches with seven astronauts—six shuttle and one long‐duration station crew member.  This is the first crew member rotation in four years involving a shuttle rather than a Russian Soyuz.

The primary assembly hardware Discovery will deliver to the space station is the $11‐million  Integrated Truss Segment P5, which measures 11 feet long by 15 feet wide by 14 feet high (3.3 x 4.5 x 3.2 meters).  It will serve as a spacer and be mated to the P4 truss that was attached in September during the STS‐115 mission of Atlantis.

Attachment of the 4,000‐pound (1,800‐kilogram) P5 sets the stage for the relocation to its final assembly position of the P6 truss and the pair of solar arrays that have bee located temporarily atop the station’s Unity module for six years.

Sooo, what's this computer glitch you mentioned in the title i hear you ask..

Well, the shuttle's computers saw the date as a number incremented from January 1, eg, The shuttle's computer saw February 2 as day 33, not as Feb 2. This only becomes a problem if the shuttle was in space over the new year period due to it not resetting the day's number to 1 on Jan 1, it just increments it to day 366.

Surely they fixed that?? Besides, how can that affect anything??
Unfortunately, the ground station computers responsible for the shuttle's navigation do reset to 1. So you'd have a scenario where the shuttle thought it was day 366 and the ground station thinks it's day 1, clearly not a favourable situation for an astronaut.

Apparently, this glitch was addressed after the 2003 Columbia accident, but, NASA officials have stated that the flight would probably be postponed to January 2007 if the flight is delayed beyond December 17 - 18. PROBABLY?? I'm sure the astronauts feel much better now.

NASA is under pressure to complete the remaining 14 flights required to finish the Space Station before the Shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, so it will be interesting to see if they're willing to risk a launch should it be delayed beyond the December 7 launch date.

Is anybody else amazed that these things fly at all? The inevitable question needs to be asked: Knowing the risks involved, would you fly on a shuttle?

Note for NASA.. I can be contacted via this blog should you require flight personnel.