A spat between two aerospace firms escalated this week when Dulles, Va.-based Orbital ATK terminated one of its employees for allegedly downloading proprietary details of a rival company’s plan to assemble satellite parts in space.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the rival firm, Space Systems Loral (SSL), is trying to permanently bar Orbital from using the information in future contract competitions, a mark of the intense competition for federal funding among companies that build satellites and launch them into orbit.

Orbital ATK declined to comment. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Robert Jacobs said that the agency is investigating the matter and that Orbital had notified the agency of the breach.

SSL’s lawsuit comes as Orbital has attempted to roll back one of SSL’s contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through a lawsuit of its own.

The SSL suit alleges that an Orbital ATK employee downloaded contract documents and technical specifications for a government-funded satellite-servicing program code-named “Dragonfly.”

The Dragonfly project seeks to develop a means of installing and reconfiguring radio frequency reflectors while in orbit when they need repairs.

SSL, the U.S. subsidiary of Canadian aerospace giant MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, was awarded the contract under NASA’s “Tipping Point” program, which provides funding for the development of advanced robotics technologies, along with 22 U.S. companies. Orbital ATK also holds a contract through the same program.

It was not clear from the documents filed Wednesday how the Orbital employee gained access to the documents. Citing communications from NASA, SSL alleges that the employee shared the documents with up to six colleagues and has since been terminated.

In its lawsuit, SSL expressed apprehension that Orbital could use the information learned from the documents to undercut the firm in future contract awards. The company says the accessed documents contained financial data, business information and even design specifications.

“With knowledge of this confidential information, competitors can modify their proposals to undercut any and all of SSL’s potential advantages,” the company’s complaint says.

SSL asks for at least $100,000 in damages, a relatively small amount for a firm of its size. Of greater consequence is a request that Orbital be permanently barred from using any of the information contained in the documents in its technological developments or contract proposals.

“SSL has no means, absent judicial intervention, of preventing Orbital ATK from incorporating SSL’s confidential and proprietary information into Orbital ATK’s own strategic plans and competing public and private sector proposals going forward,” SSL said in the complaint.